Dudes, this patch is actually... pretty good

[Marlow]

shao kahn looks more playable

If ever there was a phrase to instantly summon @Evil Canadian this is it.

 

[Evil Canadian]

If ever there was a phrase to instantly summon @Evil Canadian this is it.

He's more playable
he's still awful and probably the worst char in the game though

but he is better

 

[Swindle]

Fair enough - I didn't know that either and that sucks. Shame on whoever contributed to that mess.

It was me.
My bad.

 

[Jowabunga]

It was me.
My bad.

Meanie.

 

[Gaxkang]

@scrubquotes

Lol, you saying the game is radically different now? That trying to jail with your 1 string is beautiful? Never gonna get hit by a poke trying to do it? That there there isn't many things even a D1 doesn't punish that should or that blocking doesn't put ya at disadvantage because you weren't aggressive and attacking a lot?

That the hitboxes and hurtboxes are great now?

That the poke game has really changed? Somebody glances at the game they're still gonna see a lot of pokey-ness going on that just looks weird.

And online affects nothing? Ya really gonna go with that?

Someday maybe NRS will polish the boxes in their stuff, and maybe go beyond a cheesy party game type thing. But not yet.

And I think folks can still do D1 throw, depending on how things go. They just gotta see if it sticks in a fight or not, and act accordingly. Many times that's still best bet for getting some damage going.

 

[Jowabunga]

i honestly feel like you're going to see MORE D1 into throw for a bit as people learn the hard way they can't keep mashing pokes after they were successfully D1ed.

 

[Obly]

As badly as I want to see weak abilities get buffed (and I really, really do), I just want to add that I recognize the need for some moderation here.

Buffing poke hit adv and nerfing poke block adv and throws across the board are huge changes. I'm not sure we know or appreciate just how much it could change the way footsies are played. When people were advocating for this, I was like, "nah, no way NRS throws that kind of hand grenade in the balance barrel...!" But hot damn, they did it. It's not flashy and glamorous, but that alone could reshape the tier list.

They also opened up custom variations for ranked play at the same time. The rule of thumb in like every development and industry field when you're trying to fix/improve/debug something is to change only one thing at a time--that way if it breaks down, you know what the likeliest cause is. So making two big changes at once is pretty risky; if balance gets shot to hell, the devs are going to have a much harder time figuring out how to fix it.

Making two big changes and dropping three new characters into the mix all at the same time is almost insane.

I understand why folks feel like the patch is kind of weak and doesn't take any risks, but it actually does. And trying to rebalance all the custom abilities at the same time they change pokes, throws, variations, and roster would have been downright idiotic and an almost guaranteed disaster.

I'm not letting them off the hook. They really should have been making some of these changes incrementally over time. If we weren't in the middle of a raging pandemic, they probably would have. It is what it is. I'm sure ability rebalancing is coming.

 

[RYX]

He's more playable
he's still awful and probably the worst char in the game though

but he is better

if I could tolerate mk9 noob and pre-buff igau bane then post-buff shao kahn is a walk in the park

IT COULD BE WORSE

 

[scrubjesus111]

Screaming Soul is a good move, why do you think it's bad? I don't disagree with your point but you have a lot of useful moves on there

I’m not perfectly familiar with every character, so I could be wrong about some moves. What other good moves do I have on there?

 

[Gaxkang]

i honestly feel like you're going to see MORE D1 into throw for a bit as people learn the hard way they can't keep mashing pokes after they were successfully D1ed.

I went back to trying more D1 throws since hitting a D1 but getting hit by a D1 as I tried to jail grew tiresome when I'd see it.

People gotta watch out for that.

On a side note, watch out for Rain's D3, they like to mash that one. Your D1 needs to come out quuuuuick or else.

 

[chud_munson]

As badly as I want to see weak abilities get buffed (and I really, really do), I just want to add that I recognize the need for some moderation here.

Buffing poke hit adv and nerfing poke block adv and throws across the board are huge changes. I'm not sure we know or appreciate just how much it could change the way footsies are played. When people were advocating for this, I was like, "nah, no way NRS throws that kind of hand grenade in the balance barrel...!" But hot damn, they did it. It's not flashy and glamorous, but that alone could reshape the tier list.

They also opened up custom variations for ranked play at the same time. The rule of thumb in like every development and industry field when you're trying to fix/improve/debug something is to change only one thing at a time--that way if it breaks down, you know what the likeliest cause is. So making two big changes at once is pretty risky; if balance gets shot to hell, the devs are going to have a much harder time figuring out how to fix it.

Making two big changes and dropping three new characters into the mix all at the same time is almost insane.

I understand why folks feel like the patch is kind of weak and doesn't take any risks, but it actually does. And trying to rebalance all the custom abilities at the same time they change pokes, throws, variations, and roster would have been downright idiotic and an almost guaranteed disaster.

I'm not letting them off the hook. They really should have been making some of these changes incrementally over time. If we weren't in the middle of a raging pandemic, they probably would have. It is what it is. I'm sure ability rebalancing is coming.

I think this is the best take here. Iteration over big bang changes is better for mitigating risk. By "risk", I don't mean a risky vision, I mean risk of making the game an unplayable mess and not knowing how to roll the clock back. I know a lot of people don't really like the very gradual approach, but they probably feel that way because they avoided the path that NRS could have taken where they go bananas with changes and suddenly you have these massive, yawning valleys between tiers because changes that sounded good in theory don't hold up when millions of different matchups are played in real life. There was a little clue about how the dev teams are looking at this in the most recent Kombat Kast when Stephanie said something like "we're opening up customs, and we have no idea how it's going to go, it might be a crazy mess". I think they realize that it's going to be difficult to balance, so rather than making a bunch of guesses about what changes will be needed, they're starting from a baseline and using that to tweak based on how things emerge.

 

[Obly]

I’m not perfectly familiar with every character, so I could be wrong about some moves. What other good moves do I have on there?

FWIW, I agree with most of your list (tho I don't know enough about every character either to be super sure).

The only ones that stood out to me were Nightwolf and Liu Kang. NW has only 2-3 abilities that I'd say aren't worth using a slot for; I've used all the rest and they're all decent to strong. For LK, did you mean Shaolin Stance? That one is kinda crappy, but his Nunchaku Stance is pretty strong.

 

[scrubjesus111]

@Obly We might just disagree on nightwolf then. I don’t think anything is worthy of replacing his tournament moves, as I’ve also heard pro NW players like KingGambler say. Maybe the hawk projectile is good, not much else if anything. The Liu Kang nunchuck stance that was in his v3 is the one that’s weak. Fake mix, both low and mid give you +24f to react and both are really punishable.

 

[NaughtySenpai]

I went back to trying more D1 throws since hitting a D1 but getting hit by a D1 as I tried to jail grew tiresome when I'd see it.

People gotta watch out for that.

lol what?

 

[Gaxkang]

lol what?

Don't assume your high is gonna jail now if they hit a poke.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Don't assume your high is gonna jail now if they hit a poke.

It sounds like you still just haven't learned how to play the game, or how it works

 

[Gaxkang]

It sounds like you still just haven't learned how to play the game, or how it works

I do admit my mind is probably deficient in cheese.

And I'm not a fan of counter picking either

 

[scrubjesus111]

@chud_munson @Obly @Slymind @LawAbidingCitizen @DarksydeDash
Went ahead and included everyone advocating for moderation in balance changes in defense of the lack of changes to kustom moves. Don’t you all think that some safe tweaks were in order, at least? Make SubZero’s cold shoulder armor through all projectile types, but it costs a bar of defensive meter for each one that it armors through. Slide already ignores most projectiles, so that’s definitely reasonable. It would just give you an answer to low and air projectiles that slide doesn’t have. NRS would have been totally safe to make Raiden’s lightning rod last a couple seconds longer. Give Scorpion’s misery blade a dash cancel that takes two bars of meter. Make his AMP’d hellfire projectile easier to combo off of. None of these changes carry the slightest risk of breaking the game and dead moves become usable.

 

[Hellbringer]

I do admit my mind is probably deficient in cheese.

And I'm not a fan of counter picking either

heh

 

[Slymind]

@chud_munson @Obly @Slymind @LawAbidingCitizen @DarksydeDash
Went ahead and included everyone advocating for moderation in balance changes in defense of the lack of changes to kustom moves. Don’t you all think that some safe tweaks were in order, at least? Make SubZero’s cold shoulder armor through all projectile types, but it costs a bar of defensive meter for each one that it armors through. Slide already ignores most projectiles, so that’s definitely reasonable. It would just give you an answer to low and air projectiles that slide doesn’t have. NRS would have been totally safe to make Raiden’s lightning rod last a couple seconds longer. Give Scorpion’s misery blade a dash cancel that takes two bars of meter. Make his AMP’d hellfire projectile easier to combo off of. None of these changes carry the slightest risk of breaking the game and dead moves become usable.

Just to make clear, i praised the universal changes, the individual balance changes were disappointing to me, i gave them the benifit of the doubt in the occasion there is another patch at some point, they absolutely should've taken more risks with the balancing. Since local tournaments are unavailable at the moment, there is no better time to go wild, at least with abilities that are boderline useless.

 

[chud_munson]

@chud_munson @Obly @Slymind @LawAbidingCitizen @DarksydeDash
Went ahead and included everyone advocating for moderation in balance changes in defense of the lack of changes to kustom moves. Don’t you all think that some safe tweaks were in order, at least? Make SubZero’s cold shoulder armor through all projectile types, but it costs a bar of defensive meter for each one that it armors through. Slide already ignores most projectiles, so that’s definitely reasonable. It would just give you an answer to low and air projectiles that slide doesn’t have. NRS would have been totally safe to make Raiden’s lightning rod last a couple seconds longer. Give Scorpion’s misery blade a dash cancel that takes two bars of meter. Make his AMP’d hellfire projectile easier to combo off of. None of these changes carry the slightest risk of breaking the game and dead moves become usable.

I think the trouble is if you extend beyond "let's start at square one and see where things stand" to "let's do that but let's make some tweaks that feel obvious", it's difficult to know where to draw the line and if things end up being horrible, it can be difficult to know what caused the problem because all the changes were bundled up into a giant package. I think once custom plays out a bit, it's likely that the things you're suggesting have low risk of breaking the game in unexpected ways, but just from a sequencing perspective it makes sense to release as small a chunk as possible, see where that leaves things, and then start making iterative improvements. I also appreciate I'm biased though because I'm a software developer and Agile devotee so this is just kinda the way I view software releases.

TL;DR: I agree that the things you're suggesting are probably low risk, but it's even lower risk to release customs without extra changes ASAP, get real data, and then act accordingly.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I think the trouble is if you extend beyond "let's start at square one and see where things stand" to "let's do that but let's make some tweaks that feel obvious", it's difficult to know where to draw the line and if things end up being horrible, it can be difficult to know what caused the problem because all the changes were bundled up into a giant package. I think once custom plays out a bit, it's likely that the things you're suggesting have low risk of breaking the game in unexpected ways, but just from a sequencing perspective it makes sense to release as small a chunk as possible, see where that leaves things, and then start making iterative improvements. I also appreciate I'm biased though because I'm a software developer and Agile devotee so this is just kinda the way I view software releases.

TL;DR: I agree that the things you're suggesting are probably low risk, but it's even lower risk to release customs without extra changes ASAP, get real data, and then act accordingly.

Yeah, this is why they were blown up in the past for making too many changes at once -- usually because even seemingly small adjustments cascade into bigger combinations of things that end up being unexpectedly weak/strong.

This was kind of the case with MKX patching in a nutshell.

 

[Marlow]

I also appreciate I'm biased though because I'm a software developer and Agile devotee so this is just kinda the way I view software releases.

Yeah, I normally try and give devs and programmers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to designing games and making fixes/balance patches.

 

[LawAbidingCitizen]

@chud_munson @Obly @Slymind @LawAbidingCitizen @DarksydeDash
Went ahead and included everyone advocating for moderation in balance changes in defense of the lack of changes to kustom moves. Don’t you all think that some safe tweaks were in order, at least? Make SubZero’s cold shoulder armor through all projectile types, but it costs a bar of defensive meter for each one that it armors through. Slide already ignores most projectiles, so that’s definitely reasonable. It would just give you an answer to low and air projectiles that slide doesn’t have. NRS would have been totally safe to make Raiden’s lightning rod last a couple seconds longer. Give Scorpion’s misery blade a dash cancel that takes two bars of meter. Make his AMP’d hellfire projectile easier to combo off of. None of these changes carry the slightest risk of breaking the game and dead moves become usable.

I'm all for making moves that are truly shit workable and fixing wiffing issues then having them balance after we see the results.
I'm not sure about all the moves you mentioned because I'm not making those characters.

But I know further patches are on the way. Stephanie talked about known issues.
There are a ton of moves that are not functioning properly from this patch. Laos infinite, rains move that only juggles on player 1 side, laos buzzsaw is very strong, multiple moves are wiffing like Mileenas 11(the second mid wiffs on several characters even when the first connects)

But I don't see anything wrong with fixing unusable moves. Just want there to be long thought out debate on how they are fixed with top players, devs and the community

But I think it's very important we talk these things out

 

[Gaxkang]

heh

heh heh