Mark von Zoftmutter
Noob
Hey everybody reading this!
How should I even start this thread? Let's say that I'm a player who has almost 800 hours in Mortal Kombat 9, but I still have a feeling that I lack some of the most basic knowledge about the game mechanics.
I mostly play 3 characters (sub, sektor, JC). It's logical that I know many things about the game at this point and I don't totally suck at all, but I still have many problems with this game as I can never shake that annoying feeling that some things in this game happen rather randomly or are very strange to me. So finally I want to clear out those basics so I won't always wonder about those things. I usually don't have time or will to go into motion and make a thread like this, but those things have been eating me for awhile now and I think I won't ever be able to improve much if I don't figure them out once and for all.
Ok, let's get to bussiness, I want to make my own claims in this thread as I personaly think mechanics work in this game. What I want you to do is to examine my statements and correct me if I'm wrong on enything. I'll still have to ask some questions to, so lets start:
- Spacing in this game is very important, from what I understand spacing and footsies is basically the same thing, if you're able to position yourself to your favor by correct usage of walking, dashing and dash-blocking, you've already won half of the match.
- Offense has to be innitiated by poking or at least very fast strings, otherwise a player won't stand any chance against better opponents and even computer at extreme settings. Now I understand this very well, but how do I always know when I can attack and when I can't? Yeah it's clear to me that every char has a different moveset and very different frame data, but let's try to talk as general as possible.
So for example: I attack someone, I poke him and the poke hits, for quite some time I thought when that happens I have the advantage for a blockstring that cannot be interupted by opponent. But in recent time I've figured out that even if a poke hits, an opponent can still counter poke. This seems a bit stupid to me and I don't like it. Another thing, why would anyone want to ever poke first? If you know that someone has to poke first, you could always wait for the poke to come, crouch block it and the counter-poke immediately. That way you would always be at advantage over your opponent. It seems that poking can also be interrupted by certain fast specials like kung lao spin for example.
- When a move or a string is blocked, a player that blocked a string will almost always be at advantage, except if a move is a frametrap. If the move is a frametrap, that means it is at least 0 (neutral) on block and maybe even has a slight advantage. I'm not sure about how those frametraps works, so please let me know. So, for example: If I attack the opponent with a 224 string and he blocks it, he's at slight advantage, but most of the time he has to poke first if he wants to get in. On the other hand, if I do a 3-hit blockstring, I probably have 3 options after that, those would be:
- block immediately (probably the safest)
- jump back
- dash or walk back (dash is probably safer in most situations).
But like I said before, sometimes it seems that a player which used the string can poke first after he used it and is still at slight advantage. Is this very character specific? Lets take for example sub's 21 string. This string is considered safe and after using it the sub player mostly has enough time to poke with d3 or even d4. Because both players are neutral at this point, the player with faster reflexes gets an advantage. But then I don't understand why would neutral moves which leave the players even be consider "frame traps". If they are neutral, I don't really see any "trap" here. Again: please correct me if I'm wrong.
- Why does some players always seem to have an advantage? Over the internet, I've played against many "insane players" that always win in every situation. If you poke they poke back, they crossover always in the correct time to throw you off the most and so on. How to battle this type of players? I always try to poke and anticrossover, but most of the time I end up doing so at the wrong frame resulting in failing to anticrossover and eating counterpokes all the time.
The last question for now: What the hell is the deal with that fuzzy guard, do I understand it correctly? From my point of view, that means that you have to block standing all the time and only tap down quickly right on the frame the opponent's low string connects. If my understanding is correct, that seems pretty hard to do because you'd have to know every string of every char in the game to do this efectivelly on the constant basis. It seems low projectiles could also be blocked this way, but it's even harder because you need perfect timing and anticipation for when the projectile will make contact and not tap down on reaction (when the opponent uses it). So you have to delay fuzzy guard to the exact correct frame.
Ok, that's all for now. Once again, the form of this thread is me making assumptions which I'm not 100% convinced about. So I ask you to examine my assumptions and correct them accordingly.
It seems strange to me that those basics were not being properly explained in any of the guides I've read so far. There's always a lot of information about various more "advanced" stuff, but from the beggining of my mk experience I wasn't able to absolutely confirm some of the questions resulting in my bad "fundamentals" of the game. Especially due to the fact that MK9 is my first fighting game ever.
If I should remember anything else, I'll edit this thread. And sorry for my flawed english
Thank you!
How should I even start this thread? Let's say that I'm a player who has almost 800 hours in Mortal Kombat 9, but I still have a feeling that I lack some of the most basic knowledge about the game mechanics.
I mostly play 3 characters (sub, sektor, JC). It's logical that I know many things about the game at this point and I don't totally suck at all, but I still have many problems with this game as I can never shake that annoying feeling that some things in this game happen rather randomly or are very strange to me. So finally I want to clear out those basics so I won't always wonder about those things. I usually don't have time or will to go into motion and make a thread like this, but those things have been eating me for awhile now and I think I won't ever be able to improve much if I don't figure them out once and for all.
Ok, let's get to bussiness, I want to make my own claims in this thread as I personaly think mechanics work in this game. What I want you to do is to examine my statements and correct me if I'm wrong on enything. I'll still have to ask some questions to, so lets start:
- Spacing in this game is very important, from what I understand spacing and footsies is basically the same thing, if you're able to position yourself to your favor by correct usage of walking, dashing and dash-blocking, you've already won half of the match.
- Offense has to be innitiated by poking or at least very fast strings, otherwise a player won't stand any chance against better opponents and even computer at extreme settings. Now I understand this very well, but how do I always know when I can attack and when I can't? Yeah it's clear to me that every char has a different moveset and very different frame data, but let's try to talk as general as possible.
So for example: I attack someone, I poke him and the poke hits, for quite some time I thought when that happens I have the advantage for a blockstring that cannot be interupted by opponent. But in recent time I've figured out that even if a poke hits, an opponent can still counter poke. This seems a bit stupid to me and I don't like it. Another thing, why would anyone want to ever poke first? If you know that someone has to poke first, you could always wait for the poke to come, crouch block it and the counter-poke immediately. That way you would always be at advantage over your opponent. It seems that poking can also be interrupted by certain fast specials like kung lao spin for example.
- When a move or a string is blocked, a player that blocked a string will almost always be at advantage, except if a move is a frametrap. If the move is a frametrap, that means it is at least 0 (neutral) on block and maybe even has a slight advantage. I'm not sure about how those frametraps works, so please let me know. So, for example: If I attack the opponent with a 224 string and he blocks it, he's at slight advantage, but most of the time he has to poke first if he wants to get in. On the other hand, if I do a 3-hit blockstring, I probably have 3 options after that, those would be:
- block immediately (probably the safest)
- jump back
- dash or walk back (dash is probably safer in most situations).
But like I said before, sometimes it seems that a player which used the string can poke first after he used it and is still at slight advantage. Is this very character specific? Lets take for example sub's 21 string. This string is considered safe and after using it the sub player mostly has enough time to poke with d3 or even d4. Because both players are neutral at this point, the player with faster reflexes gets an advantage. But then I don't understand why would neutral moves which leave the players even be consider "frame traps". If they are neutral, I don't really see any "trap" here. Again: please correct me if I'm wrong.
- Why does some players always seem to have an advantage? Over the internet, I've played against many "insane players" that always win in every situation. If you poke they poke back, they crossover always in the correct time to throw you off the most and so on. How to battle this type of players? I always try to poke and anticrossover, but most of the time I end up doing so at the wrong frame resulting in failing to anticrossover and eating counterpokes all the time.
The last question for now: What the hell is the deal with that fuzzy guard, do I understand it correctly? From my point of view, that means that you have to block standing all the time and only tap down quickly right on the frame the opponent's low string connects. If my understanding is correct, that seems pretty hard to do because you'd have to know every string of every char in the game to do this efectivelly on the constant basis. It seems low projectiles could also be blocked this way, but it's even harder because you need perfect timing and anticipation for when the projectile will make contact and not tap down on reaction (when the opponent uses it). So you have to delay fuzzy guard to the exact correct frame.
Ok, that's all for now. Once again, the form of this thread is me making assumptions which I'm not 100% convinced about. So I ask you to examine my assumptions and correct them accordingly.
It seems strange to me that those basics were not being properly explained in any of the guides I've read so far. There's always a lot of information about various more "advanced" stuff, but from the beggining of my mk experience I wasn't able to absolutely confirm some of the questions resulting in my bad "fundamentals" of the game. Especially due to the fact that MK9 is my first fighting game ever.
If I should remember anything else, I'll edit this thread. And sorry for my flawed english
Thank you!
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