Roy Arkon
I will leave my seal on you!
I know that some people will harshly disagree with this, and some might say that this topic is overdone, but please hear me out on this one.
I love MKX, IJ2 is a hell of an awesome game, but MKX is still for me the best game NRS has done so far overall. One of the things that love about MKX is of course, the Variation system, that's because it gave MKX one thing that almost no other fighting game has ever gave:
Character gameplan options.
When you wanna play a fighting game on a high level, but you wanna play a certain character simply because you like that character, you might come into issues such as balance and the character viability potential, but even if all of those issues are out of the picture, you might still have one more issue: that character's overall gameplan. You might think this character is gonna be an easy-to-use character only to find out it a very execution-heavy one, or you might looking for a Rushdown character and what you get at the end is a pure Zoning character. So then the you need to either suck it up and go with what you got and make the best of it, or go to another character that you don't like as much, but will be more suitable to you gameplan wise.
That's where the Variation system in MKX is coming to play (no pun intended). Since each character in the game has 3 Variations, some with minor changes between each and some with drastic ones, it is so much easier to pick the one Variation that you find the most suitable for you to play for your character of choice, and even if you wanna counter-pick to a different character, you can pick your preferred Variation of that character and have a roster of only the Variations that you like the most, or you if you think it's good for you, you can just play all 3 Variations of the same character and cover all of the MU's for that character. IJ2, on the other hand, does bring the Gear-specific moves with which you can alter the moveset of character, but it's not legal in competitive play and it's only good for the casual players, so if you wanna play with a certain character you have to stick to it's core moveset, and if you can't, then you're shit out of luck. But in MKX, since all of the Variations are set to specific movesets, all of them are still in the confines of the competitive play, so both casuals and competitive can enjoy them for their fullest.
For example, I am a Noxious Reptile player in MKX, that's because Noxious allowed me to play Reptile the way I wanted to play him, as that Variation allows you to keep Reptile's universal Zoning and Anti-Zoning without giving up on his Variation-specific tool and still have a much more simplistic gameplan overall (while also still having up-close game of course). That's why I stuck to Noxious 99%, and barely touched either Nimble or Deceptive. But in IJ2, I started with Poison Ivy, and aside from the fact that she might be the hardest character to use in IJ2, I'm still not 100% sure if you can call her a Zoning character or a hybrid character that leans more to Zoning, and if what she does is indeed Zoning, this is not the kind of Zoning that I would like to use. So I had to switch to Sub-Zero (just because I can make him look like Reptile) and Starfire (my counter-pick character, also because she is might the closet character to Reptile gameplan-wise). Of course that having 3 Variations per character might still not be enough for some people, but this is much more preferred then just having to find a way around just one Variation.
A lot of people will now bring up that it was very hard to balance the game because of this, as each Variation is essentially a character in it's own right, and according to some people on TYM, even Paulo said that it was very hard to balance. That's very understandable, but there is a solution: Instead of having 3 Variations per character, you can have just 2. That way, not only it will be easier to balance the game, but you will have more room for different characters then what MKX or IJ2 have. Also, this can also lead to some really cool stuff, like having some Variations specific Fatalities or even, for the first time ever, Variations specific X-Rays, each with their own animations and properties, for example, one X-Ray being a traditional grounded mid hitting X-Ray, and the other can only be done in the air and it hits overhead.
And just in case you were wondering, I think they should also bring the IJ2 customization options as well, but only on the aesthetic department, and without the whole stats thing, that isn't necessary.
So that's my reasoning for why the Variations system should comeback for MK11. After listing this, I would like to know what you guys think
I love MKX, IJ2 is a hell of an awesome game, but MKX is still for me the best game NRS has done so far overall. One of the things that love about MKX is of course, the Variation system, that's because it gave MKX one thing that almost no other fighting game has ever gave:
Character gameplan options.
When you wanna play a fighting game on a high level, but you wanna play a certain character simply because you like that character, you might come into issues such as balance and the character viability potential, but even if all of those issues are out of the picture, you might still have one more issue: that character's overall gameplan. You might think this character is gonna be an easy-to-use character only to find out it a very execution-heavy one, or you might looking for a Rushdown character and what you get at the end is a pure Zoning character. So then the you need to either suck it up and go with what you got and make the best of it, or go to another character that you don't like as much, but will be more suitable to you gameplan wise.
That's where the Variation system in MKX is coming to play (no pun intended). Since each character in the game has 3 Variations, some with minor changes between each and some with drastic ones, it is so much easier to pick the one Variation that you find the most suitable for you to play for your character of choice, and even if you wanna counter-pick to a different character, you can pick your preferred Variation of that character and have a roster of only the Variations that you like the most, or you if you think it's good for you, you can just play all 3 Variations of the same character and cover all of the MU's for that character. IJ2, on the other hand, does bring the Gear-specific moves with which you can alter the moveset of character, but it's not legal in competitive play and it's only good for the casual players, so if you wanna play with a certain character you have to stick to it's core moveset, and if you can't, then you're shit out of luck. But in MKX, since all of the Variations are set to specific movesets, all of them are still in the confines of the competitive play, so both casuals and competitive can enjoy them for their fullest.
For example, I am a Noxious Reptile player in MKX, that's because Noxious allowed me to play Reptile the way I wanted to play him, as that Variation allows you to keep Reptile's universal Zoning and Anti-Zoning without giving up on his Variation-specific tool and still have a much more simplistic gameplan overall (while also still having up-close game of course). That's why I stuck to Noxious 99%, and barely touched either Nimble or Deceptive. But in IJ2, I started with Poison Ivy, and aside from the fact that she might be the hardest character to use in IJ2, I'm still not 100% sure if you can call her a Zoning character or a hybrid character that leans more to Zoning, and if what she does is indeed Zoning, this is not the kind of Zoning that I would like to use. So I had to switch to Sub-Zero (just because I can make him look like Reptile) and Starfire (my counter-pick character, also because she is might the closet character to Reptile gameplan-wise). Of course that having 3 Variations per character might still not be enough for some people, but this is much more preferred then just having to find a way around just one Variation.
A lot of people will now bring up that it was very hard to balance the game because of this, as each Variation is essentially a character in it's own right, and according to some people on TYM, even Paulo said that it was very hard to balance. That's very understandable, but there is a solution: Instead of having 3 Variations per character, you can have just 2. That way, not only it will be easier to balance the game, but you will have more room for different characters then what MKX or IJ2 have. Also, this can also lead to some really cool stuff, like having some Variations specific Fatalities or even, for the first time ever, Variations specific X-Rays, each with their own animations and properties, for example, one X-Ray being a traditional grounded mid hitting X-Ray, and the other can only be done in the air and it hits overhead.
And just in case you were wondering, I think they should also bring the IJ2 customization options as well, but only on the aesthetic department, and without the whole stats thing, that isn't necessary.
So that's my reasoning for why the Variations system should comeback for MK11. After listing this, I would like to know what you guys think