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Discussion Patches overwhelmingly help NRS games not hurt them

Do you think NRS patching strategy is much better this time?

  • Yes

    Votes: 74 60.2%
  • No

    Votes: 36 29.3%
  • In between overeall

    Votes: 13 10.6%

  • Total voters
    123

AK Harold

Warrior
Patches will almost always provide more positive than negative changes to a game, any game. If they did not, then the devs would burn for it. I think the main problem here is that people are having multiple conversations and lumping into one. Lets take time to separate a few of the conversations in here. This will be long and I am sure I will get flamed on several points since I am going to do this in one shot without as much thought put into this as everyone else.

1. Bugs, infinites, game breaking mechanics. They exist, deal with it for now. Anyone saying NRS did a bad job or testers did a bad job because there are bugs and these things "clearly" should have already been addressed has not played a video game in the last 10 years. Every game releases with bugs. Hit box bugs etc. seem blatantly obvious to us, but really think about how many bugs existed before release. They have to go on a priority scale when developing. Also, testers do exactly that! They test the game, they are not perfect and can produce every possible testing parameter. Naturally certain match ups that breed interesting/buggy results will occur even after testers have done their job in the time frame given (example- character A d1 whiffs on characters B,C,D but not character E,F,G. This stuff happens and should get fixed and time will do that. Step back and think of it this way, how long did it take for certain bugs to be "discovered" and used in other games with 200+ dedicated players practicing at least 2-3 times a week AND tournaments for 2 years? Things get unnoticed or simply written off by the untrained eye at times so do not trash the people that work hard to try and make something as great as we have before us. Bring them up, make videos, reproduce them and help fix these problems without ego.

2. Character balance. NERF xyz, the dreaded nerf. Yes there are going to be obviously strong characters like Kung Jin and there will be tiers developed eventually. BUT please understand the repercussions of certain actions. Let us use Kung Jin for example. Most people can agree his 50/50 is pretty strong with their range and safety. The problem I have is people want to outright nerf it in some way, typically more negative frames. This spawns a few more discussions though that you have to include but seldom do. IS the 50/50 what makes him good? If they nerf it to be safe but more negative is that enough? Is making it punishable overkill? If either option is chosen, will he be top 5 top 10 or bottom 5? I understand the frustration of figuring out a game and fighting against a character that are faster to figure out. It sucks. What if in 3 weeks after a patch, there was something figured out to break down Kung Jin's jump in punch (which I feel is very strong), dive kick, neutral Jump punch, etc. Then in addition to being nerfed we find his other qualities are not as powerful as we believed. Example - I hear constantly that his strings are so good because it is another 50/50. I have outright proven this false with proper block training. His only true 50/50 at this time that I know of is the initial hit. So if you are getting hit mid string by his low/high and then proceed to getting launched by a bow staff spin or knocked down on the low one OR getting launched by the last hit of the enhanced versions please lab more. Alternatively, if you blocked like you should have then proceed to not punish it or hit him back for less than 10% damage, lab more. It may make your matches a lot more even than you think. Then ANOTHER question comes up, how many match ups will this nerf alter? Does he already have a bad match up that no one knows about? What ARE his good match ups and why? I do not mind someone saying they "THINK" a character is overpowered, but please elaborate. As obvious as you think something is overpowered, it may be just as obvious that it is not to someone else. I mean you guys scoff at new players saying xyz is so broken and unbeatable. Lets all just assume there is a better or worse player than you playing the exact same match up and breakdown the match ups consistently. It is a waste of time to just flat out say oh Jax vs Sonya is 7-3. What the fuck does that even mean? It provides zero information about why you believe anything and the numbers are measuring what again? Did you play one Sonya player as Jax and have a 30% win rate? I have no idea what it means so be a more helpful player and elaborate what is going on in that match up so we can collaborate on solutions/ideas/tech.

3. Game Balance - Buffs, the "oh baby!" button. Will keep this shorter since it is similar to the above. Ask all the same questions. "I feel Quan Chi has a hard time waking up against Cassie in the cornder and gets murdered, they should give me a better armor move." - Harold. It sounds reasonable, but you again are just taking one instance in a vacuum with disregard to the match up as a whole and other possible match ups. Quan Chi is known to have very strong zoning and 50/50 tools among other things. Most people currently would say "fuck no!" to Quan Chi getting a meter burned skull that is mid and even safe. Why? Because you are looking at his tools collectively. But ask all the same questions, what are the match ups like? Maybe he needs it? Maybe he does not.

4. Game Balance - Tiers. I am sorry to inform everyone here, but sometimes in fighting games there are characters that are not as good as the others. I do not know if you guys knew this. If you can provide a legitimate example aside from maybe street fighter 1 let me know. I think Ken may have been better than Ryu in that version anyhow. Really, if your character is not the highest tier or even mid tier you have a couple options. Deal with it and win anyways, or do not deal with it and move onto a character that will win more. "I don't like any of the top tier characters" Well shit the world is not perfect you know? There is something inside of you that just does not like them I can not argue with that. But you weigh what is more fulfilling for you winning or winning with a character you enjoy. Also, do not be sour about abandoning your character and then someone else makes them good and vice versa. And PLEASE do not be the guy that says they are "day 1 xyz" after the fact. (sorry that got personal) lol.

5. Patches are dumb/smart. Patches like I said above will always be more positive than negative, but they do something very important to me as a spectator and player. As a player, if it is 3 weeks before a major I attend, it becomes a little bit like a day 1 tournament again where bullshit flies. "Oh that move is positive/negative now" or damn that moves hit box has changed etc. As a spectator on stream or live, listening to "my character got nerfed so I lost" bugs the shit out of me. You can not definitively say that as you have no idea if you would have won or lost pre patch. The shifting of match ups will happen, that is the intended purpose of balance patches.

6. Character strength. For the love of god, please do not judge character balance based on one parameter such as Top 8. This is ludicrous. It pisses me off more because as a whole this community does it EVERY tournament. Maybe give the players some credit? If I went to a game stop tournament and random select, I guarantee you the cursor would pick the "best" character in the game. Yes we are a bit better player pool, but still the top 8 players are usually THE top 8 players. They know how to play well and pick good characters that suit them. In all honesty though, balance is not displayed in top 8 exclusively. It is a good indication of what high level players are leaning toward. Judging balance on the 1st place character is just as dumb. It makes a HUGE assumption that every player or even the top 8 in the tournament is of equal skill level, thus the player that won simply made the best character choice. Just stop discrediting good players like that. Fucking day 1 tournament and people said Erron Black is top tier for sure, where is he now in that discussion? No one is saying he is bad/good as much.

7. Top players say (off topic). . . Top players are not the go to source of character balance. They have tremendous talent in developing strategies, tactics, reading opponents, picking tools that they feel are good, mental fortitude, and execution. They also at this stage of a games life are focused on their main or a handful of characters. What they are not doing is trying to balance the game as best as possible. They have a wealth of knowledge of their best character, but at this stage they do not have every match up yet. They are focusing on improving their play more and more through tournaments and practice and discussion. These experiences typically tailor their practice sessions. If @FOREVER KING gets 3-0'd by a Scorpion, he will be figuring out how to beat Scorpion the next day. He will not be making a thread about the virtues of Scorpion and demanding nerfs. He is not a good source for balancing the game. If you bodied any of the top players they will always ask this, "What is that, and how do I beat it?" If you guys want to get good do this instead of bitching about a character and assuming you know the match up etc. already. If you simply want to try to balance the game, then discuss specifics. The details are important, again shit is not obvious.

In conclusion, stuff. . . Discuss match ups more, learn more, the best characters may keep being the best. Give more concrete evidence as to why this is and break down why it is good/bad in this game. Lab, play, discuss. Emphasis on DISCUSS. So far in this thread, "oh no this character is too good it is obvious." "I know this character is on the bad list, buff them." Get off your high horses and realize no one knows what the fuck is going on yet.

@GGA Jeremiah sorry to derail the thread some, but I was hoping for meaningful information in this thread, but so far just have people speculating without details about any kind of balance issues.
 

16 Bit

Mash d+1~Cat Claws
Elder God
NetherRealm Studios
How about this, while the OP is talking about all the "good things" that came from patches (subjective of course) how about what the patches did not do? Simple example, why did jade and stryker not get buffs they needed to be competitive? Why did green arrow and ares not get the tools they needed for characters like MMH so they wouldn't get pummeled in those matchups? Why was kabal allowed to keep his 6f iagb when it was obvious it could have been toned down to the lvl of other iafb in mk9 and still be good? How about aquamans trident rush not getting nerfed? My list can keep going on haha, like I said the OP is clearly looking for something with this thread and I am not falling for it.


so you wanted more patches?
 

Reauxbot

You think you bad? You aint bad.
Yes his f4 is slow but it can work with conditioning. Regardless he's enough of a threat without f4. Also I wouldn't say his wakeups suck. They're actually very good imo. Just because you can crouch block both doesnt make them bad.

What do you do when scorpion doesn't wake up? If you're sitting and blocking the pressure will go in his favor.
Well thats just me telling you im trying to make a nice quick read. I can either wait a split second for a reaction as Cassie has a speed advantage. Im new to the MK series as player. Not a spectator. I watched @MITDJT against REO. Its not just the character. But the player as well.

Ryu was midtier in SF, and im sorry to use another game as an example but those are how i started, and he was pretty dominate cause of the players.

Back to MKX ive played Cassie a week. Im not high level by any means. And as much as the Kung Jin talk goes, i like playing against him. Its just annoying.
If scorpion doesnt wake up with anything and blocks i could d1 to check him. Those are my options as of now with my noob ass. Id rather learn from a loss than complain about the character.
And thats another reason why i come to this forum. To learn from you guys. I like these threads for insight and what everyone else thinks. Everyone can learn from opinions.
The only threat about patches from NRS is that it ruins characters, matchups and people interest in the game. And thats the worst part. :/
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
How about this, while the OP is talking about all the "good things" that came from patches (subjective of course) how about what the patches did not do? Simple example, why did jade and stryker not get buffs they needed to be competitive? Why did green arrow and ares not get the tools they needed for characters like MMH so they wouldn't get pummeled in those matchups? Why was kabal allowed to keep his 6f iagb when it was obvious it could have been toned down to the lvl of other iafb in mk9 and still be good? How about aquamans trident rush not getting nerfed? My list can keep going on haha, like I said the OP is clearly looking for something with this thread and I am not falling for it.
Well, to be honest, OP wasn't saying that NRS couldn't do better job, his point was that "we would've been better without patches" statements, whether genuine or just overstatement, are kinda bollocks.
 
so you wanted more patches?
Nope, with the patches that happened I believe more things should have been implemented. I actually dnt want more patches ever haha, rather fewer patches that deal with more things so they are more efficient . Also I know Jeremiah is hella salty about sub zero haha, but learn the matchup and lvl up
 

dookieagain

Last Bastion of Arcades
How about this, while the OP is talking about all the "good things" that came from patches (subjective of course) how about what the patches did not do? Simple example, why did jade and stryker not get buffs they needed to be competitive? Why did green arrow and ares not get the tools they needed for characters like MMH so they wouldn't get pummeled in those matchups? Why was kabal allowed to keep his 6f iagb when it was obvious it could have been toned down to the lvl of other iafb in mk9 and still be good? How about aquamans trident rush not getting nerfed? My list can keep going on haha, like I said the OP is clearly looking for something with this thread and I am not falling for it.
Hey as I Stryker main I resemble that remark.

Also I might add, we never got buffed because we had top players utterly defending terrible design and bad characters. Tom Brady went out of his way early on whenever I would talk about Stryker's issues to defend him as the best zoning character, and say that even though he couldn't punish stuff everybody else could full combo punish that it would have made him OP to get any buffs.

I think sometimes people are too scared of change, and we want to imagine it takes months to know something, and in rare cases that is true. But a lot of us Stryker players knew he was hopeless early on, and the community constantly told us to adapt.

Oh well this game I was lucky enough to like a high tier. But I'm not a serious player anymore so if she's nerfed it's all cool with me.
 

Reauxbot

You think you bad? You aint bad.
How about this, while the OP is talking about all the "good things" that came from patches (subjective of course) how about what the patches did not do? Simple example, why did jade and stryker not get buffs they needed to be competitive? Why did green arrow and ares not get the tools they needed for characters like MMH so they wouldn't get pummeled in those matchups? Why was kabal allowed to keep his 6f iagb when it was obvious it could have been toned down to the lvl of other iafb in mk9 and still be good? How about aquamans trident rush not getting nerfed? My list can keep going on haha, like I said the OP is clearly looking for something with this thread and I am not falling for it.
I think its just about the catering that was going on for injustice. I stopped playing that game after a few patches and went back to SF and MARVEL. Quite a turn off.
Im not sure what hes getting at however. And i never played MK9 once to know much at all.
 

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
How about this, while the OP is talking about all the "good things" that came from patches (subjective of course) how about what the patches did not do? Simple example, why did jade and stryker not get buffs they needed to be competitive? Why did green arrow and ares not get the tools they needed for characters like MMH so they wouldn't get pummeled in those matchups? Why was kabal allowed to keep his 6f iagb when it was obvious it could have been toned down to the lvl of other iafb in mk9 and still be good? How about aquamans trident rush not getting nerfed? My list can keep going on haha, like I said the OP is clearly looking for something with this thread and I am not falling for it.
But aren't you going against your own argument with this statement. This post is saying "well they fixed some things, but what about these things that weren't fixed". So it sounds like since some bs stayed, all bs should stay? I don't get that part. It sucks that they didn't balance everything, but would you really rather have had nothing instead??

What the OP is trying to show is that patches did much more harm than good by pointing out the track record. Even the earliest one. By looking at each version of the patches the majority of them were great fixes. Of course there's some extra Bane buffs and the death of Scorpion that sucked, but I would say at least 75% of those patches individually were an improvement to gameplay. It goes against the popular narrative of "patches destroy the game" by providing examples of what each patch did to each character individually.
 
Well, to be honest, OP wasn't saying that NRS couldn't do better job, his point was that "we would've been better without patches" statements, whether genuine or just overstatement, are kinda bollocks.
But ppl dnt say we were better off without patches typically, moreso that things are changed and down the road ppl say things like "yeah that change wasn't good"
 
But aren't you going against your own argument with this statement. This post is saying "well they fixed some things, but what about these things that weren't fixed". So it sounds like since some bs stayed, all bs should stay? I don't get that part. It sucks that they didn't balance everything, but would you really rather have had nothing instead??

What the OP is trying to show is that patches did much more harm than good by pointing out the track record. Even the earliest one. By looking at each version of the patches the majority of them were great fixes. Of course there's some extra Bane buffs and the death of Scorpion that sucked, but I would say at least 75% of those patches individually were an improvement to gameplay. It goes against the popular narrative of "patches destroy the game" by providing examples of what each patch did to each character individually.
That is not what I meant Lol, I meant that he is mentioning these things about the patches being good without acknowledging the many things that were left out (which adds to the negatives list ). That is my point.
 

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
That is not what I meant Lol, I meant that he is mentioning these things about the patches being good without acknowledging the many things that were left out (which adds to the negatives list ). That is my point.
Ahhhh now I see. I understand that. Yea that sucks for sure.
 

Reauxbot

You think you bad? You aint bad.
Everyone is talking about Kung Jin. I have said it before and will continue saying it: "Swarm Queen D'Vorah will be a problem." No one is talking about her, but she's absoluty ridiculous.

Just wait and see.
Didnt Dvorah just win a competition? Ducky i believe
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
less block strings? Hellfire scorpion has some of the best block pressure in the game coupled with damage over time from flame aura. His air to air game is insane as well. Kj does have more range.

Posting things that are wrong as fact is what leads to a lot of this nonsense.
If i were you, i wouldn't bother man, ever since yesterday i have noticed that sometimes there are ppl that don't know two shits about what they're talking about.
 

Pnut

Mouth of the Illuminati
i can't tell if I'm just tired and unable to process everything or if this new talking point that the Injustice patches didn't patch enough as a knock against patching makes no sense.
I heard pre-patch Injustice was better than post-patch because it provided more diversity. That seems to be the narrative of certain players. I wish I could've seen more Supermans using f23.
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
But ppl dnt say we were better off without patches typically, moreso that things are changed and down the road ppl say things like "yeah that change wasn't good"
They do, however, repeat "let it roll, remember DS" etc. like chant. I suppose that was the reason this thread was created. It's specifically to point out particular fault in "don't touch anything" rhetoric rather than to claim that patcher were faultless (which they weren't and what is posted in the OP doesn't contradict this idea).

What we need, and any FG other there for that matter, is indeed more thorough patching rather than leaving everything as it is IMO.
 
i can't tell if I'm just tired and unable to process everything or if this new talking point that the Injustice patches didn't patch enough makes no sense.
I have always thought the injustice patches left out many things that could have helped with the "balance" that people want so much. I know for sure when I see that aquamans trident rush wasn't nerfed or that MMH tele never got nerfed, and etc. That there are a multitude of things that were left out in patches
 

Reauxbot

You think you bad? You aint bad.
i can't tell if I'm just tired and unable to process everything or if this new talking point that the Injustice patches didn't patch enough as a knock against patching makes no sense.
You have youtube channel right?
Id love to see what youve been posting
 

d3v

SRK
Do people honestly think that MK9 and Injustice should have went a year before being patched? Who would have still played it seriously if pre-patch Superman, BA, Kabal, Cyrax, Kung Lao and Aquaman were allowed free reign for a year?
Vanilla Sagat reigned for two years (arcade, plus console release) and SFIV fared fine.

SA2 Chun has never been nerfed and 3rd Strike is still going strong in Japan, Europe and parts of Asia.

Cable, Magneto, Storm and Sentinel were never nerfed and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has a storied decade of competitive play.
 

Smoke_Of_Finland

Believe in the hop kick
You've seen videos and I've played against actual good kj players.

Scorpion 214 fbc 214 string is insane, it completely jails and you can only block. . Fbc makes so many normals better and hit confirmable into combo as well as leading to massive chip and meter gain.
You can't backdash or armor through if he tries to loop it?
 

WraithLord

Mortal
I just want them to support the game for more than a single year of patching. More patches + more time supporting the game = more things they can balance and fix = a game without ridiculous kabal iagb/ndc pressure; 80% 1 bar resets and 100% safe sonya.
 

Reauxbot

You think you bad? You aint bad.
Vanilla Sagat reigned for two years (arcade, plus console release) and SFIV fared fine.

SA2 Chun has never been nerfed and 3rd Strike is still going strong in Japan, Europe and parts of Asia.

Cable, Magneto, Storm and Sentinel were never nerfed and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has a storied decade of competitive play.
I like this post alot. I actually loved 3rd strike though. :)
If you check Romnetos channel he is literally still discovering a lot of stuff in MvC2 to this day.
 

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
Vanilla Sagat reigned for two years (arcade, plus console release) and SFIV fared fine.

SA2 Chun has never been nerfed and 3rd Strike is still going strong in Japan, Europe and parts of Asia.

Cable, Magneto, Storm and Sentinel were never nerfed and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has a storied decade of competitive play.
I'm offended that you left out Tekken 4 Jin Kazama.
 
They do, however, repeat "let it roll, remember DS" etc. like chant. I suppose that was the reason this thread was created. It's specifically to point out particular fault in "don't touch anything" rhetoric rather than to claim that patcher were faultless (which they weren't and what is posted in the OP doesn't contradict this idea).

What we need, and any FG other there for that matter, is indeed more thorough patching rather than leaving everything as it is IMO.
Also so ppl dnt start making inferences again, I am not saying no patches are needed. I also know that there will always be better and worse characters no matter how a game is patched (which I think some ppl fail to realize).