Perfect Imbalance - A way to balance MK X?

So as we read and watch everything about MKX we've sure heard the philosophy that the NRS team currently has on the variations , where counterplay meta between character styles will be a good part of the game and thinking about it i don't belive it's actually a bad way to create a good meta for the game.

Now don't get me wrong , saying "perfect imbalance" doesn't mean make every variation hard counter another , even making a game this way NRS will need a fine tuning of the mechanics / characters options but that's a concern we can't discuss right now as the game is not out nor we have a playable build.

What i want to discuss is do YOU actually like the game balanced this game or would you rather have a more generic movelist/playstyles/fixed strategies to ease matchups as close to even as they can be.

Do watch the video before commenting.

Discuss

I agree with the video. The reason why so many high level chess games result in stalemates is simply because everyone knows of the fixed strategies that work and how to counter them and it does get boring imo.

This video made me think that MK 9 was never fully explored, that some characters never got a chance to evolve cause it was just assumed that X character was 100 times more powerful so what was the point of playing character Y. People can say that Injustice caused the drop off from interest in MK 9 but I just think people don't have staying power.

We didn't get yearly updates like SF IV but so what?

Its a good idea but im not sure NRS could deliver us such a game because they'll probably have just 1 character that's stupidly broken, instead of just OP ones, normalized ones, and weak ones.

Flagg said:

This video made me think that MK 9 was never fully explored, that some characters never got a chance to evolve cause it was just assumed that X character was 100 times more powerful so what was the point of playing character Y. People can say that Injustice caused the drop off from interest in MK 9 but I just think people don't have staying power.

We didn't get yearly updates like SF IV but so what?

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Actually one of the things mentioned in the video is that a character in a "perfectly imbalanced" game can't be good at everything. That was MK9's problem. Characters like Cyrax, Kabal, Sonya, etc had almost no poor matchups. Similarly, characters like Kano, Baraka, Sheeva, etc had no good matchups. MK9 wasn't perfectly imbalanced at all.

Hats off to the OP for providing the video though. Top class concept and explanation. Variations could certainly be used to achieve something like that, not that the concept requires variations. TBH I was a stern supporter 5-5 matchups but if this concept can indeed produce an evolving meta game then I'm all for it.

This perfect imbalance thing looks like 6-4 MU stuff.
To create cool strategies you need to have options. MK9 doesn't have many as there are some specials and some normals 50-60% of which are useless (most of the normal enders and some retarded things like Kenshi u4).

Injustice on the other side has options. You can push block, back dash with invulnarability frames, every character has some armor moves, etc. So even if you face some bad MU for you character you still have options to overcome. Hovewer many normals are worthless again - NRS should re-think their approach.

Also you can't compare chess and fighting games as there are no identical characters. And I really liked how author mentioned that on release there will be a lot of "NERF THIS, NERF THAT" - Deathstroke yep - and developers shouldn't act immidiately but give game some time to discover itself.

I firmly believe that the best way for a fighting game to (realistically) achieve balance is through a rock-paper-scissors method.

For a simplistic example using only three characters, suppose that the first is a zoner, the second is a counter-zoner and the third is a rushdown. Counter-zoner beats zoner (duh!) and gets beaten by rushdown. Rushdown beats counter-zoner but loses to zoner. Zoner beats rushdown and loses to counter-zoner. Provided that none of these match-ups are worse than 6-4, such a game would be well-balanced.

As for how this will hopefully work for MKX? With a bit of luck (OK, maybe a truckload of luck) each variation of a character will act as one of three 'rock-paper-scissors' types, and will go no better than 6-4 against one third of variations, no worse than 4-6 against another third, and 5-5 with the remaining third. Of course, given that we're going to have dozens of different variations and far more than three playstyles, this is a very, very high expectation to have. But hey, I can dream...

Very informative video on concepts wears familiar with but seldom consider. The problem with this is that unlike League of legends and Star Craft, fighting games (and some shooting games) take a different skill set that could make identifying balance very difficult early on without having time for the game to evolve. When you've got units/ moves/ plays/ elements, the skill set largely involved a Pokemon-esque Rock Paper Scissors system that ties into strategy, or a just plain competent strategical manipulation of the game's system. This isn't always necessarily true with fighting games, as a player with impeccable game knowledge may pail in comparison to another with great reflexes, reads, execution and mind games. This causes things to take slightly longer to flesh out. So many fighting games have 'bottom tier ' characters end up being fully explored and have their roles reversed. Vise versa is also true.

Alternatively, sometimes it's just a case of elements that are overlooked and simply not really understood. Which is why a 'decent' character may turn out to be 'broken' when OTHER elements of the game are changed. Further still, there are cases where it takes a very special player to show how imbalanced a character can be. Or a very good sniper to show that your weapon is only 'theoretically' balanced with its long load time, but in the hands of a player who doesn't miss a shot, not only is it excessively lethal, it can change the flow of the match when certain key elements and situations are met.

In my opinion, while consistency is found when NRS uses a character like Scorpion as a dummy or Batman as a blue print starter, it's best to excessively play each member of the cast against each other. Play to their strengths. Play to their weaknesses. Because while this doesn't guarantee balance, it may make obscure 9-1, 8-2 MUs more obvious. And if a little tweaking can bring those MUs to at the very least 7-3, fewer people would be inclined to counter pick or leave the game and instead try their headrest to even the odds because they know its doable.

That's not to say that NRS doesn't do so already, and I know very little about fighting game development. But if a game isn't perfect, but is devoid of death MUs, that's a game balance I'm very okay with.

chess is much different, its purely intellectual and each decision has no room for error (you can't fuck up placing a piece), even with this white has an advantage because of first turn. Fighting games have many more unforced errors because they involve spacing, whiff punishment, execution, along with guesses and strategies

I think a good way to balance a game is too continuously patch it, and make sure each move has a drawback. For example, we could have adjustables like cooldowns in between moves. Basically more than 1 trait, that way we can have interesting special moves but they have to be sued sparingly.

Then you have systematic things like the parry system in third strike which allows the player to take over.


Street fighter 4 does a good job balancing because the characters have very limited tools, and it comes down to more refined things like spacing and what not. That being said ae 2012 was vortex dominated

Kabal laughs at this video and IGB's it to death.

there's always the old axiom (bill parcels) increased variables reduces performance. So having more variables in a fighting game will reduce the performance in terms of balance. MK X might be more balanced because of less variables per character and it might come down to more refined aspects rather than character abuse. Sacrificing variables can make a game more boring however.

Also, i'm extremely concerned about how nrs will deal with priority on jump ins over ground normals. I am also concerned whether each move will have an intended purpose. Part of what makes street fighter so interesting is for the most parts move have niches, they don't have any f23's in that game, maybe outside of ryu's low forward. Also moves have priority over other movces and what not and i think that would make mk more in depth in the footsie game

gamemk said:

This is what they're attempting to correct with the Styles. Mortal Kombat's core gameplay is a very broken concept because every character usually needs a projectile in order to be useable in the system. It started with MK1, and just got worse as they added things like mid air attacks, and full screen dash moves. This makes it very difficult for them to design new characters because that requires the new characters to have almost identically strong moves to the stronger characters in order to compete. This also leads to characters like Kabal having so many good moves that he can't be given anything else without making him perfect. A lot of Mortal Kombat's balance problems could be solved with a projectile trade property, but people seem to hate that idea. So, Nrs is going to try partitioning chunks of strong attacks into each style system. We'll have to see if that works.

Capcom tried to balance SF2 with common sense, like big grapplers with no projectile get buff strength but bad speed. And, a female character like Chun Li gets buff speed but bad strength. It's the same argument I use about the Nba:

Center: Big and strong, but slow.(Grappler)
Shooting Guard: Balanced.(Balanced/Shoto type)
Forwards: Strong with long limbs.(Zoner)
Point Guard: Quick and agile, but weak.(Rushdown)

The only issue I see with the styles is that there still is no archetype structure in MK even with the styles. How do they decide what goes with what? I hope they're not trying to add archetypes within each character, like you can have a zoning Kung Lao or a rushdown Kung Lao, because Kung Lao's archetype, if I had to go by my opinion, should be a zoner. Rushdown shouldn't be a part of his arsenal (Same with Scorpion).

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yes but from what i've seen it seems like 1 style will have extra damage and be kind of plain, and then 2 other styles. An example that could occur is that displacer might be the only useful style for raiden, because style 1 has too limited of tools, and style 3 has no counter-zoning nor the ability to get a zoning game going.

I know nrs is attempting something interesting but on the flip side, they might not have any concept of how to balance it. They might just have one lame ass extra damage style for every character with limited tools, and 2 other weird styles with one being kind of gimmicky in a lot of cases. But atleast a more limited variety of tools might leave it to be more in hands of the player, i just have learned that i think nrs isn't an expert at balancing games nor do they seem to have a complete understanding what is good from a competitive play standpoint.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that injustice is a different game and it was experimental, but characters in that game often play a large role in comparison to players, with tools like doomsday's shoulder charge and vortexes, players can salvage wins without being good at the most skillful things (spacing and whiff punishment). Players who i feel i am leagues beyond as a player can compete with me to a degree because of the game's design. I'll beat them because i make way better reads than them, but they shouldn't do as well as they do (or take games like they) because i have put in way mroe thought and effort to be a more complete player than them, and the games just takes those things i am good at in certain matchups and throws them out the window.


I think nrs is learning, but learning isn't everything. I also think they are very smart in terms of innovation and in terms of marketing. From a marketing standpoint i think they will attempt to foster an online competitive community. It makes sense to compete in that market niche with street fighter and develop a loyal fan base because if they grow and mildly invest in the competitive aspects of the game than that could expand their horizons into an untapped market.

This is what all FGs should do. Tekken 6 was extremely balanced, every single character was viable, but it was arguably extremely boring. Every character played basically the same. Having too many universal moves dilutes a FG, in my opinion.

NRS are certainly not the best developers when it comes to balancing, but I feel like they were on the right track with Injustice. There aren't any Cyraxes (Cyrax's?), though there is a Kabal, but a lot more of the characters are viable.

I think the variations will end up like someone else said, one main variation for most characters and then two others to counter certain matchups. I just like that I might not have to change characters every other fight.

I for one believe most of the balance lies within the game mechanics, not always the characters. Character A dominates Character B, but gets beat by Character C, and the DEVs have to create balance. A buff or nerf to help out Character A's MU with Character C can help or hinder the MU against Character B, so DEVs have to be careful when it comes to character balance. IMO balancing out game mechanics is an easier approach.

The best way to balance a fighting game is common sense really , you can't have a character like aquaman with drasticly more range and more walk speed at the same time then the rest of the cast . You can't have mmh hitting you with mix-ups while also being able to turtle you out and get away from you as soon as he chooses. Honestly NRS should bring in testers for full time development of the game and not just in the last couple of weeks , because veterans in FGs will pick up on these issues fairly quickly.

I like the concept, but I still think the perfect fighting game would be a game where all the characters in the game go 5-5 against eachother. But that probably isn't possible to create, so perfect imbalance is the next best option

FOREVER KING said:

I like the concept, but I still think the perfect fighting game would be a game where all the characters in the game go 5-5 against eachother. But that probably isn't possible to create, so perfect imbalance is the next best option

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If NRS were able to balance the game to where every character went 5-5 against each other (all variations included along with any and all potential DLC characters), every fighting game company out there would bow before them and ask them how they did it.

I don't expect NRS games to be balanced, I expect them to be fun. If the game somehow ends up balanced I'll be amazed.

Broken gameplay mechanics happens to be discovered even if later in any fighting game .... seems to be a stuff inherent to this kind of game ....

However, major props for NRS for trying innovate with something .... the 3 variations surely it's an interesting element to be analyzed and explored, and , somehow to be tested and who knows, proven if works for MK .... let's see what happen

FOREVER KING said:

I like the concept, but I still think the perfect fighting game would be a game where all the characters in the game go 5-5 against eachother. But that probably isn't possible to create, so perfect imbalance is the next best option

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It's possible and very easy actually. Just make a fighter w/ the entire roster being exact clones of each other.

I think as far as a fighting games goes when speaking of a "Perfect Imbalance" we should consider a few things...
1st. Player skill and ease of execution. This being how easy a character can be to play vs. what it's muscle memory learning curve is.
2nd. Advantage + Disadvantage on block or hit for each character's moves. This being weather or not certain moves are capable of "Stuffing" or interrupting another character's move.
3rd. The ease of understanding how each character competes with one another. This being for example, a zoning character vs. a grappler and how each one adapts to the other on a fundamental level.
With these things in mind and the way we have scene MKX to have three different play styles per character, I firmly hope that Ed Boon and crew and taking these things into account. If so and we get lucky then the "Perfect Imbalance" the OP's video described would be achieved. Otherwise we will simply have to suffer through yet another bundle of patches and NRS screw ups.
We can only hope

FOREVER KING said:

I like the concept, but I still think the perfect fighting game would be a game where all the characters in the game go 5-5 against eachother. But that probably isn't possible to create, so perfect imbalance is the next best option

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the only way that could truly happen would be in a game where each character is exactly the same.

The video makes a lot of sense but I also think that thats what Nrs is aiming with MKX. They add dif variations which could be countered with another one.

It seems like thats exactly what nrs is doing.

I think NetherRealms has been doing real well with this concept in their games. Most specifically Mortal Kombat and Injustice. Just consider, they have don well enough with it that it has taken Injustice almost a full year to start to find which character really rules. So far I don't think anything or anyone is going to dethrone MMH... cause he is broken... but the point is that with the original cast I think most everything was balanced and characters were fair.

Mortal Kombat was doing just as well until DLC Kenshi and Freddy broke the system... Kabal is different because finding and executing nomad dash pressure flawlessly is just damn impressive and hats off to those who can do it.

I think that 6-4 and 7-3 MUs are important and make a fighting game fun. Why would we wanna play a game full of 5-5s? Where is the fun? I personally love playing a 6-4 MU on my opponents favor, that forces me to learn to play better and find counter strategies etc.

Also having lets say a char beat another 6-4 and loses to another 7-3 makes it so people go to new chars and more chars will be played at a high level or online etc.