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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
No one ever wants to talk about the big white elephant in the room that happens all the time. NRS usually can't win in Capcom game and viceversa, everyone is good in their own environment. Since Capcom games have a larger community/following, they trash the game and word gets spread around. The meta has evolved and you can barely see a player that is high/top tier in more than 1 of these genres ...Capcom(SF and MVC), NRS (Injustice/Mkx), Smash brothers, 3d fighters (tekken/soul calibur). It's almost unheard of because each of the players that excels in one of these categories. If NRS was the bigger scene, Street Fighter would be doodoo.
 

Hidan

Where the hell is Reiko's wheel kick
All the arguing over patching being inherently good or inherently bad completely ignores reality.

Yes, patching overwhelmingly helps NRS games. This be some trufax. However it's also true that if every single recent NRS game wasn't OBVIOUSLY an irredeemable shit pile of bugs, glitches, glaringly tragic balance issues and poorly, poorly, POORLY thought out meta, they wouldn't need to implement this rapid-fire patching system just to make the game playable in the first three months.

So yeah, patches are good for NRS games and I've never seen them do it superfluously. However the fact that NRS games legit need all this patching is pathetic.
THIS

If a game isn't ready, they shouldn't release it.
Learning stuff is fun. Relearning... nah. Better find something new for our brains.
 
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The problem with the patches is they continue to murder anything that makes a character original. Fisticuffs johnny cage can no longer b12 like an idiot. While i agree it was silly its still what that whole variation is based around and to nerf it into the ground just shows lack of foresight. What made tanya unique is her teleports. Removing the invincibility would be fine but giving her more recovery frames is just a lazy way to eliminate the problem instead of messing with her frame data for a better solution. Nrs doesnt just nerf characters they take out core playstyle mechanics which ruins the diversity in the game. It also forces players to have to relearn how to effectively play their character without core tools rather than simply adapt to a few changes in frame data. Why go into practice mode when anything you discover is going to be taken out? Stick to your bnb's and learn your normals and after a few patches thats all that will matter anyways. They buff low tier characters normals only to nerf their specials later which takes away what makes them unique. Everyone will eventually play the same at this rate. Hate on me if you want but imo its a shiny game on the top layer but without having a variety of different character archetypes its plain and boring underneath with nothing to really discover or innovate.
 

Hidan

Where the hell is Reiko's wheel kick
Wow you are dead wrong about so much. Good job pushing the narrative that Capcom players just wanna invade & take money then duece out. Especially with Champ who was shockingly nice at NWM & was excited for the game & stayed that way till the game got patched to much & was still telling people to play MKX.
FChamp was talking shit about the NRS scene after KDZ (a supposed outsider in fchamp's mind till then) won IGAU at EVO 2013. Also JWong's participation never lasts more than 4 months (and that's for 3-4 events).

Get your shit straight, @Slips is right
 
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No we fucking don't know that especially with how he was practicing hard for the game till patch blitz happened.
First of all, this is how NRS does stuff, you don't have to force your own ways on other developers and say what they do is wrong. Maybe this method is what works for NRS games.

Let's say NRS patching never happened. How likely would it be for these well-known players such as floe and justin wong to stick with the game? The chances of them quitting is a lot higher than them sticking with MK and we don't need to pretend like this isn't the case. NRS is making the right choice to cater to the loyal players and not the 3 to 4 capcom/anime/3d FG players that might stick with MKX because they didn't patch. And if these players aren't winning from the start they will probably be quitting anyway. I would say them not winning from the start has a lot more to do with them quitting MK than the patches do.

The patches make the game better and that is pretty hard to argue. I see players making the argument that X player plans to go to a tournament but gets his character nerfed and gets fucked over by the patch. How about not looking at this from a non selfish point of view. What if a couple of hundred players at the tournament get fucked over because your character was OP to begin with? We have seen this happen at the first evo with injustice and the game barely survived that.

What would you do, fix the game and keep a whole group of loyal players or cater to the 3 to 4 players from other communities that might stick with the game?
 

rev0lver

Come On Die Young
First of all, this is how NRS does stuff, you don't have to force your own ways on other developers and say what they do is wrong. Maybe this method is what works for NRS games.

Let's say NRS patching never happened. How likely would it be for these well-known players such as floe and justin wong to stick with the game? The chances of them quitting is a lot higher than them sticking with MK and we don't need to pretend like this isn't the case. NRS is making the right choice to cater to the loyal players and not the 3 to 4 capcom/anime/3d FG players that might stick with MKX because they didn't patch. And if these players aren't winning from the start they will probably be quitting anyway. I would say them not winning from the start has a lot more to do with them sticking to MK than the patches do.
This is the point that's not getting across lol. Doesn't everybody remember all these guys getting hype about Persona when it released? And UNIEL? And TTT2? Most of these outsiders from other communities don't stick around because they're focused on other games, and that's fine. It's cool when they do, but most of those who do are actually dedicated and adjust with the patches without complaining.
 

DabJr 187

Twitter NE_8a_DabJr & Twitch NE_8A_DabJr
My advice would be just to ignore anyone saying "game is new give it time."

They scroll past explanations of things that objectively don't fit that mold because most people agree with it, which is strange.

Infinites need to be removed, glitches and stage bugs need to be fixed. While it may be true that it's too early for significant nerfs, there are things that game knowledge and time can't deal with.

Glad someone that people respect posted this. Anyone else would get 15 pages of flaming, thread locked, or moved to the complaining thread when they aren't complaining.
Preach it man
 

Jaku2011

Filled with determination
Does it really matter if capcom players stay or not? Why is it a big deal didn't Jwong leave KI for a similar reason, pretty sure KI is still going without him. Patching is fine if people leave because of it oh well I guess.
 

GAV

Resolution through knowledge and resolve.
I don't really care who stays and goes. I will play the game, and watch high level play, as long as I'm entertained by it.

Like the patches or not, that doesn't effect me either. Personally, I like them.

I even like when people don't like them - especially when it results in childishly entertaining temper tantrums.
 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
The thing is the patches give players incentive to bitch. I deal with whatever patches come as much as I may disagree with the methods. What really bothers me is the mentality of our community. Some people may come up with valid complaints and suggested changes but it seems to encourage a lot of people to just bitch and complain about anything they don't like to deal with.
 

PPJ

()
Premium Supporter
NetherRealm Studios
Balance is overrated everyone just wants there character to be strong
I watched and played in the beginning. It was a blast playing with and seeing all this rigged shit like Summoner Quan and Raiden F1 going off. Believe it or not some people find that fun. When I see patches just take fun stuff like that out in favor of balance (yeah right) or some shit I lose interest. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
i guess ur word is bond
yup crowds filled with clowns like floe booing nrs games and bitching on twitter is definitely fun
other game scenes booing and chastising injustice evo 2013
oh but they were just playing around, right? the boos were just for fun
huge double standards going on that is blatantly ignored
girls just wanna have fun
all hail kusoge!!!!! yay!!!!!
 
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I'm going to address Slips's post in a minute but first let's talk about something real quick. The whole "there are more positives than negatives in the patch, therefore the patch is good!" argument is intellectually dishonest and I'm surprised people are taking that seriously.

First off, as I proved in my last post, large communities playing relatively straightforward games like SF4 have failed miserably to assess the balance of the game after a long period of time, measured in months and years. So when I read through this thread and see things like "XXX, YYY, ZZZ characters were broken, the patch nerfed them, 3 good changes!!!" I want to roll my eyes. You don't know where these characters would have wound up long term, if the community would have found appropriate counters, if the overall tone of the game would have changed making their strengths obsolete and exposing their weaknesses. You rely on an outside source (the patch) to solve the problem rather than letting the players solve it for themselves.

Also, when you refer to so many characters as "broken" it waters the word down to the point of meaninglessness. As I said in the last post, Slips mentioned FIVE characters as either broken or incapable of being countered. Even if he was right, that means they're not actually broken and that you have a top tier that a meta can develop around. There is no possible way of knowing if that meta would have been better than the final game, after the next 10-12 patches. So much changes so often that you can't even theorycraft your way around it. I mean in a world with Tanya would initial patch Quan Chi even be "broken" anymore? Seems to me he would be countered pretty hard. I don't even think he was #1 at the time of his nerf anyways, that round of nerfs was questionable to say the least. This version of Sub Zero seems like he does OK on CEO version Tanya, with day 1 non-nerfed GM Sub, that might be a really tough matchup. With a hard counter the Tanya hysteria might never happen and she'd just be another strong character. As I said, we have no way of testing it and it's not even worth theoryfighting about. So please, stop using nerfed characters as proof of success, it's just not true and you know better.

Next, I want to talk about the conclusion reached that "patches make it better competitively!" When someone posted my facebook post, Slips assumed that when I was talking about how the game was different at every major that I was saying that these were positive changes. I said nothing of the sort. What I will say is that out of all the majors we've had so far the CEO version was the worst one, and I'm not sure anyone can dispute that. The patching strategy by NRS clearly failed CEO. They tried to nerf Tanya and failed. They weakened 2 popular characters on extremely short notice and lowered the level of play at the tournament. They weakened Fisticuffs Johnny a character nobody was complaining about balance wise simply because DJT vs. SonicFox "looked silly". On Twitter I even called out this nerf while the match was going on, it was something NRS was definitely going to do not for game balancing reasons but because they didn't want people to laugh at their game. So I think all the talk about patching making tournaments better needs to be put on hold when we have actual evidence that for MKX it simply isn't true. After all the patches, we're in a worse position competitively than we were with 0 patches.

Of course the obvious solution that they're going to take is PATCH MORE.

Let's look at MKX's predecessors and how the patching decisions did for their games competitive lifespan. MK9 was released April 2011. Injustice was released April 2013. Marvel 3 was released before both of them. It's still going. SF4 first came out way before both of them. It's still going, still the #1 competitive fighting game despite my objections. Melee came out in 2001! It's going stronger than ever. If the final versions of MK9 and Injustice were enhanced by the patches and put into a long term enjoyable state then people should have still been playing MK9 and watching MK9 streams in 2013-2014 and people should still be playing Injustice and watching Injustice right now. Neither of those have happened. Those games even have a lower interest level now than old versions of other studio games like MvC2, 3s, GGAC, etc. Maybe Injustice desperately needed help because after it's performance at Evo it was an exposed game competitively but it shouldn't have been shipped in that condition in the first place. If the patching truly helped the long term competitive balance of those games, their lifespans should have been extended. But that didn't happen.

So maybe it's time to take a step back. These games had a short competitive lifespan and a very short stream lifespan compared to their peers. Maybe it's time to ask why.

Now, let's move on a little bit and address Slips's last post to me where he talked about "the needs of the many" and about how if Kitana, Reptile, Mileena, etc players would keep playing if not for the hope of patches (and we must be talking about hope because even after all the patches, Kitana and Reptile still are not good characters).

Let's start by asking a question. Are these patches designed to appeal to casual players or tournament players?

By context it seems like he was suggesting that we should cater to casuals (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But if the goal is to keep interest and keep the game strong, this is a losing battle. For the first 2 months of MKX's lifespan it was doing better numbers than SF4/Marvel on twitch and getting entrants on par with SF4. Those numbers have started trending downwards as casual attention has faded. MKX is still well above Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Persona, etc. in terms of attention but going forward into Evo and beyond it's pretty clear that the casual interest bump that put MKX over SF4 has ended and that SF4 will outdraw it in attention going forward. Appealing to casuals is a losing battle; they cannot be satisfied and will leave on their own for their own reasons. SF4 lost them, Marvel lost them, Guilty Gear lost them, MKX is currently losing them. Appealing to them is not worth it.

So we must be aiming these patches at tournament level players, right? As the entrant level drop in MK9 and Injustice showed, these patches turned these people off as they are being turned off in MKX. So that can't be true either.

Let me give you actual specifics as to what it's going to take me to stay current with MKX. Others (not Slips) have said in this thread and elsewhere that it's just small changes and shouldn't be that big a deal.

I play Sonya. I like CO best (obviously) but I dabbled in SF before it was nerfed and I'm pretty sure there's some juice in Demolition now after 6/23 but it's going to take a lot of work to bring it out. I'm reasonably sure Sonya is a top 10 character as of right now as her natural enemies keep falling by the wayside 1 by 1. She may even be a little better than that. She's also been fortunate in that CO has been relatively untouched up to now.

Let's talk some of her matchups. D'Vorah vs. Sonya pre 6/23 was probably a 6-4 matchup for D'Vorah but it was a matchup I'd played out a bit and felt relatively confident in. Was I ever going to beat Honeybee? No. I just don't have that level of MK fundamentals. But I felt pretty confident that I could hold my own with a lot of D'Vorah players.

Even though CO Sonya is primarily a rushdown character I played that match around the tip of my F+2 range because I wanted to stay away from F112 as that's the most likely way I could get myself into trouble and the other person's most likely way to start offense. If I'm slightly out of range I can punish F1 on reaction with low air divekick. I can use backdash and decent backward walking speed to control range as I see fit and also use F+2 xx military stance or F+4 xx military stance/leg grab option select to make sure I don't walk myself into the corner. Even knowing this, this strategy necessitates giving up ground as a smart player would understand what I was doing and walk me down. So I'd be playing out of the midscreen for the most part. Instead of using 21, 21u4 as my juggle ender to gain screen space, I'd use a custom setup I developed myself ending juggles with F+2, max height 124 to get the hard knockdown.

It is (it was) an interesting setup especially on characters whose wakeup games you didn't have a lot of fear of. Instant divekick from upback would get you to land right in front of her on her wakeup before she gets up allowing either 11 xx military stance, overhead, low, throw options or go straight to military stance and evaluate options from there. Instant divekick from upforward would get behind her but not the same options since there would be a slight delay. Going into military stance or straight throw worked out OK but lost to mashing. You'd have to condition someone to get mileage out of that setup. If you either delay getting off the ground for the divekick, lower the height before ending the juggle with 124, or do the divekick slightly higher you can force them to block on wakeup and it was safe-ish on block because it was so low but still not recommended because a slight miscalculation in height leads to F112 and that's just not good. OS to catch backdash, full combo on hit. Pretty decent stuff. Not many other Sonya's really explored the F+2, 124 ender so I got a lot of mileage out of this stuff. 21, 21u4 was far far more common.

Were I to get myself into trouble blocking F112 you could flicker guard going low to high since B+1 was faster. Sometimes I'd even let them have B+1 just to check if they could get a full combo out of it since the execution was so tight (pre 6/23 4f maximum IIRC). For longer sets this kind of thing is useful information. Around patch time I was also working on a lazy man's OS starting with a low block into a backdash since the timing to jail off overhead was so tight. I'd pay the small damage penalty to get out of the situation. I think it was going somewhere but I had lots more testing to do to know whether it was real or not.

This was all pre 6/22. In theory this match got a lot better for me. In reality, it means a lot of work for me.

One of the few nerfs CO Sonya got is 5f extra landing penalty on whiff divekick. So all the work I put into F+2, max height 124 setups, more or less out the window. The setup still has legs but not as many, almost all the stuff involving a go behind is out the window. Landing in front gives just about the same landing situation as landing behind did before. Were I to keep this going forward I'd have to figure out how to incorporate leg slam as an option in here somewhere in order to control wakeup buttons. But I haven't got that far yet. For now this is a matchup where I'll end juggles in 21, 21u4 or F+2, 121 leg grab depending on positioning. Not the end of the world, relatively simple adjustment to make.

But now I'm not exactly sure where to stand. The matchup calculus has changed. Do I allow her into range of F112? I mean it's still a rough situation but only low is guaranteed. Plus low into full combo is even harder meaning drops and suboptimal punishes are more likely if I give that up. If I don't fear the following mixup, doesn't that mean F112 is less scary? Doesn't that mean that I should base less of my gameplan around whiff punishing and just get in there and mix it up? I'm not sure. If I give her the range that I was giving her before and just play the match out as I was doing, don't I allow her to get an unearned advantage by letting her walk me down and not letting me get to the corner? She still outdamages me so I have to play carefully but HOW carefully is optimal?

I don't know.

It's going to take a lot of match experience first off just to test how the changes actually play out, then once I make a decision I'm going to have to play even more to build muscle memory and make sure I'm making the right decision over and over. As much as I wish I could just delete things from my brain, I'm not a computer, muscle memory/reversion to old habits is a real thing. This will take time.

Instinctively I still think D'Vorah probably beats Sonya, although it did get better. But maybe I'm wrong. I just don't know and given that the online is so bad, I don't even know how I can test it going forward since I probably won't be able to get a good long casual set with a D'Vorah until I actually get into Vegas next week.

Ultradavid mentioned that what he hates most in games is uncertainty. He and I have a pretty similar attitude on games (play the same characters in some games also) so I agree with him on that but what I hate even more than that is wasted time. I spent a lot of time working on this matchup because I assessed D'Vorah pre 6/23 as a very strong character going forward. Now I feel like this time was not just wasted but detrimental to me going forward as I'm going to be playing the matchup incorrectly for a little while until I get adjusted.

Similarly let's look at vs. Tempest Kung Lao since it features a similar situation. Previously I gave him space like I gave D'Vorah because I didn't want him to get his pressure started. But the most recent patch from a couple days ago weakened his frame advantage off MB hat and I saw a video where Quan Chi uppercutted him out of the resulting string. Can Sonya do that? If Quan Chi can uppercut that means I can also buffer leg grab from crouch. Pretty sure at least. I honestly don't know, it's written on my “stuff to look at” excel list. I don't even know HOW different that match is yet because I haven't put in the time yet. Also I don't have to worry about changing my juggle and my setups because I respected his wakeup too much to mess with empty divekick setups. So at least I have that going for me, only 2 major points of uncertainty going forward.

Again, note that my character is almost completely unchanged. I've been lucky. Far luckier than if I had chosen a different character to work on 2 months ago. Doing this (necessary) process if I was a Scorpion player and not even sure of my character's own options just adds an extra level of headache.

This is what I want to avoid. I don't want to do this re-evaluation process every 2 weeks until NRS decides they're “done”. This is what it's going to take to be a top player at this game, something that doesn't happen at ANY OTHER MAJOR STUDIO'S games. Actually multiply that by 3 because I'm pretty sure you need at least 3 characters to insulate yourself from the patching process. It's just too much.

As someone who's competed at the very top levels of other games I know what kind of work it takes to be a top player at a game. It's an intimidating process even without the ground shifting out from under you on a bi-weekly basis. Say what you will about me, but after Evo I just don't think this is for me.

And as I said before, this is one man's opinion but as the falling entrant and viewer numbers show, I am not alone. Not by a longshot.
 

buyacushun

Normalize grab immunity.
I think there are couple ways to look at the patching instead of it being black and white.

When I saw the big patches for Kenshi and Kitana that makes me feel like NRS didn't know what to do with those characters. No character should ever need everything changed in some way 2 months in. So I feel one part of this is that NRS needs to make the game better before release.

Which is also why the patches can be a good thing. NightWing's d1 advantage, Aquaman's block infinite, TG Raiden's block infinite, Mournful Kitana's infinite and things of the sort all need to go. I for one am happy that they nerfed the block advantage on Tempest KL and Shinnok. But they also patched them to that in the first place which is also bad.

NRS needs to be more communicative with their patches. This is one place they just don't get right. Instead of just dropping them at a time no one knows. If they had told people of some character's frame changes I'm sure some players could do the math and talk about scorpion and d'vorah. Scorpion players would be able to change up the gameplan slightly and d'vorah players could have asked for the frame buffer or at least alert NRS how the 1 frame link impacts the players.

As for the players the only people who can't really complain about character's changing is the PC crowd. When the patch does drop we have to wait who knows how long for it. This allows us (or at least me) to focus on other aspects or maybe practice some new tactics before I HAVE to. Console players and tourney goers aren't allowed this simple commodity. We saw what happened to scorp and d'vorah players. Now imagine another main thinking "why should I practice my character's strengths when they might get nerfed hard ala Fisticuffs JC." That's very off putting no matter how you slice it. At least with notice maybe we can influence them to leave fisticuffs with something or give JC mains a chance to learn the other variations if they feel like the nerf is too much.

So the way I see it is there is some right and some wrong to the way NRS patches things. It's just not only that but also overarching problems with the game and competitve players. If NRS would keep the early patches to slight changes and eliminating too strong tactics AND talked to players about what's going on then I couldn't see a problem. But that's not what happens and whatever the reason for it isn't good enough reason to cause flaws.

Me personally I'm wondering if I will keep trying to take the game seriously. I see the good that happens but there is also bad and with the way the meta of the game is right now i'm waiting to see if that will change.

That's my 2 cents anyways thanks if you read.
 

PPJ

()
Premium Supporter
NetherRealm Studios
on paper this seems like a fair old school vs new school mentality sort of debate

in reality its a good amount of players from other scenes complaining about NRS games are not the way they want them to be for various different reasons, one of the main reasons being the patching style

if these people ACTUALLY gave a fuck, they'd accept the game for what it is, whether it be balanced or unbalanced
they can simply drop the game if they don't like it/not having fun but don't go around acting all pretentious and bitching about the way NRS games are handled -> this has been going on for 5 years now

if i pick up a different fighting game i wouldn't bitch about how the devs handle their game. you don't have to believe me
 
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rev0lver

Come On Die Young
First off, as I proved in my last post, large communities playing relatively straightforward games like SF4 have failed miserably to assess the balance of the game after a long period of time, measured in months and years. So when I read through this thread and see things like "XXX, YYY, ZZZ characters were broken, the patch nerfed them, 3 good changes!!!" I want to roll my eyes. You don't know where these characters would have wound up long term, if the community would have found appropriate counters, if the overall tone of the game would have changed making their strengths obsolete and exposing their weaknesses. You rely on an outside source (the patch) to solve the problem rather than letting the players solve it for themselves.
I'm going to read the rest of this post when I have time, but we do know a lot of this in retrospect. Jeremiah made this post after two years of understanding why these were good changes. We know what the patch did, which was changing an incredibly unbalanced game into one of the most overall balanced fighting games in the last few years.

In Injustice, I worked on Superman vs Lex for a long time. If anyone can give me a sense of how vanilla lex vs vanilla superman wouldn't have been absolute garbage in the long term I'll apologize. For example, one of the changes to Superman was the nerf to f2, and one of the changes to Lex was a range buff on my standing 1. I know what my counter was before that, an unsafe corp charge that would've led to a near full-health bar punish or a mb b3 (assuming he doesn't have his trait up). That's all I could do, and many other characters were stuck with similar bad options. I can block forever, and there are options if he stops, but they're also huge read-based risks assuming they get impatient. Most of these things aren't that complicated. There wasn't anything else to find. There would have been NO reason to play that character without the balance changes.

There's other things that there's literally no "counter" to like massive damage output.

With the long-term knowledge we've gained post-patch we can understand what things would have done without it. And it would've been bad.
 

RM_NINfan101

Nine Inch Nails fan from Metro Detroit, Michigan
Not too sure if this discussion is really gonna get anywhere. The people who play NRS games, sometimes just solely NRS games are okay with the patching cycle though I must admit that's not every player.

While people who are not usually a part of the scene dislike it for many reasons that of which make sense, but people in this scene will discredit for the sake of their game, or make counter-arguments that the patch system currently works. I disagree that the patch system works as great as the GGA guys and others wanna put it even with facts in my face. (The whole crouching mid whiffing on block that was prevalent throughout MKX's roster should of been a true fix and done first before any buffs were given, but that just shows me the game was rushed to an extent, something I doubt players want to admit. There's other counter-points I could make, but ultimately I think everyone knows at this point I dislike the frequent patches.)

That being said, this was an enjoyable read for both sides.
 
I'm going to address Slips's post in a minute but first let's talk about something real quick. The whole "there are more positives than negatives in the patch, therefore the patch is good!" argument is intellectually dishonest and I'm surprised people are taking that seriously.

First off, as I proved in my last post, large communities playing relatively straightforward games like SF4 have failed miserably to assess the balance of the game after a long period of time, measured in months and years. So when I read through this thread and see things like "XXX, YYY, ZZZ characters were broken, the patch nerfed them, 3 good changes!!!" I want to roll my eyes. You don't know where these characters would have wound up long term, if the community would have found appropriate counters, if the overall tone of the game would have changed making their strengths obsolete and exposing their weaknesses. You rely on an outside source (the patch) to solve the problem rather than letting the players solve it for themselves.

Also, when you refer to so many characters as "broken" it waters the word down to the point of meaninglessness. As I said in the last post, Slips mentioned FIVE characters as either broken or incapable of being countered. Even if he was right, that means they're not actually broken and that you have a top tier that a meta can develop around. There is no possible way of knowing if that meta would have been better than the final game, after the next 10-12 patches. So much changes so often that you can't even theorycraft your way around it. I mean in a world with Tanya would initial patch Quan Chi even be "broken" anymore? Seems to me he would be countered pretty hard. I don't even think he was #1 at the time of his nerf anyways, that round of nerfs was questionable to say the least. This version of Sub Zero seems like he does OK on CEO version Tanya, with day 1 non-nerfed GM Sub, that might be a really tough matchup. With a hard counter the Tanya hysteria might never happen and she'd just be another strong character. As I said, we have no way of testing it and it's not even worth theoryfighting about. So please, stop using nerfed characters as proof of success, it's just not true and you know better.

Next, I want to talk about the conclusion reached that "patches make it better competitively!" When someone posted my facebook post, Slips assumed that when I was talking about how the game was different at every major that I was saying that these were positive changes. I said nothing of the sort. What I will say is that out of all the majors we've had so far the CEO version was the worst one, and I'm not sure anyone can dispute that. The patching strategy by NRS clearly failed CEO. They tried to nerf Tanya and failed. They weakened 2 popular characters on extremely short notice and lowered the level of play at the tournament. They weakened Fisticuffs Johnny a character nobody was complaining about balance wise simply because DJT vs. SonicFox "looked silly". On Twitter I even called out this nerf while the match was going on, it was something NRS was definitely going to do not for game balancing reasons but because they didn't want people to laugh at their game. So I think all the talk about patching making tournaments better needs to be put on hold when we have actual evidence that for MKX it simply isn't true. After all the patches, we're in a worse position competitively than we were with 0 patches.

Of course the obvious solution that they're going to take is PATCH MORE.

Let's look at MKX's predecessors and how the patching decisions did for their games competitive lifespan. MK9 was released April 2011. Injustice was released April 2013. Marvel 3 was released before both of them. It's still going. SF4 first came out way before both of them. It's still going, still the #1 competitive fighting game despite my objections. Melee came out in 2001! It's going stronger than ever. If the final versions of MK9 and Injustice were enhanced by the patches and put into a long term enjoyable state then people should have still been playing MK9 and watching MK9 streams in 2013-2014 and people should still be playing Injustice and watching Injustice right now. Neither of those have happened. Those games even have a lower interest level now than old versions of other studio games like MvC2, 3s, GGAC, etc. Maybe Injustice desperately needed help because after it's performance at Evo it was an exposed game competitively but it shouldn't have been shipped in that condition in the first place. If the patching truly helped the long term competitive balance of those games, their lifespans should have been extended. But that didn't happen.

So maybe it's time to take a step back. These games had a short competitive lifespan and a very short stream lifespan compared to their peers. Maybe it's time to ask why.

Now, let's move on a little bit and address Slips's last post to me where he talked about "the needs of the many" and about how if Kitana, Reptile, Mileena, etc players would keep playing if not for the hope of patches (and we must be talking about hope because even after all the patches, Kitana and Reptile still are not good characters).

Let's start by asking a question. Are these patches designed to appeal to casual players or tournament players?

By context it seems like he was suggesting that we should cater to casuals (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But if the goal is to keep interest and keep the game strong, this is a losing battle. For the first 2 months of MKX's lifespan it was doing better numbers than SF4/Marvel on twitch and getting entrants on par with SF4. Those numbers have started trending downwards as casual attention has faded. MKX is still well above Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Persona, etc. in terms of attention but going forward into Evo and beyond it's pretty clear that the casual interest bump that put MKX over SF4 has ended and that SF4 will outdraw it in attention going forward. Appealing to casuals is a losing battle; they cannot be satisfied and will leave on their own for their own reasons. SF4 lost them, Marvel lost them, Guilty Gear lost them, MKX is currently losing them. Appealing to them is not worth it.

So we must be aiming these patches at tournament level players, right? As the entrant level drop in MK9 and Injustice showed, these patches turned these people off as they are being turned off in MKX. So that can't be true either.

Let me give you actual specifics as to what it's going to take me to stay current with MKX. Others (not Slips) have said in this thread and elsewhere that it's just small changes and shouldn't be that big a deal.

I play Sonya. I like CO best (obviously) but I dabbled in SF before it was nerfed and I'm pretty sure there's some juice in Demolition now after 6/23 but it's going to take a lot of work to bring it out. I'm reasonably sure Sonya is a top 10 character as of right now as her natural enemies keep falling by the wayside 1 by 1. She may even be a little better than that. She's also been fortunate in that CO has been relatively untouched up to now.

Let's talk some of her matchups. D'Vorah vs. Sonya pre 6/23 was probably a 6-4 matchup for D'Vorah but it was a matchup I'd played out a bit and felt relatively confident in. Was I ever going to beat Honeybee? No. I just don't have that level of MK fundamentals. But I felt pretty confident that I could hold my own with a lot of D'Vorah players.

Even though CO Sonya is primarily a rushdown character I played that match around the tip of my F+2 range because I wanted to stay away from F112 as that's the most likely way I could get myself into trouble and the other person's most likely way to start offense. If I'm slightly out of range I can punish F1 on reaction with low air divekick. I can use backdash and decent backward walking speed to control range as I see fit and also use F+2 xx military stance or F+4 xx military stance/leg grab option select to make sure I don't walk myself into the corner. Even knowing this, this strategy necessitates giving up ground as a smart player would understand what I was doing and walk me down. So I'd be playing out of the midscreen for the most part. Instead of using 21, 21u4 as my juggle ender to gain screen space, I'd use a custom setup I developed myself ending juggles with F+2, max height 124 to get the hard knockdown.

It is (it was) an interesting setup especially on characters whose wakeup games you didn't have a lot of fear of. Instant divekick from upback would get you to land right in front of her on her wakeup before she gets up allowing either 11 xx military stance, overhead, low, throw options or go straight to military stance and evaluate options from there. Instant divekick from upforward would get behind her but not the same options since there would be a slight delay. Going into military stance or straight throw worked out OK but lost to mashing. You'd have to condition someone to get mileage out of that setup. If you either delay getting off the ground for the divekick, lower the height before ending the juggle with 124, or do the divekick slightly higher you can force them to block on wakeup and it was safe-ish on block because it was so low but still not recommended because a slight miscalculation in height leads to F112 and that's just not good. OS to catch backdash, full combo on hit. Pretty decent stuff. Not many other Sonya's really explored the F+2, 124 ender so I got a lot of mileage out of this stuff. 21, 21u4 was far far more common.

Were I to get myself into trouble blocking F112 you could flicker guard going low to high since B+1 was faster. Sometimes I'd even let them have B+1 just to check if they could get a full combo out of it since the execution was so tight (pre 6/23 4f maximum IIRC). For longer sets this kind of thing is useful information. Around patch time I was also working on a lazy man's OS starting with a low block into a backdash since the timing to jail off overhead was so tight. I'd pay the small damage penalty to get out of the situation. I think it was going somewhere but I had lots more testing to do to know whether it was real or not.

This was all pre 6/22. In theory this match got a lot better for me. In reality, it means a lot of work for me.

One of the few nerfs CO Sonya got is 5f extra landing penalty on whiff divekick. So all the work I put into F+2, max height 124 setups, more or less out the window. The setup still has legs but not as many, almost all the stuff involving a go behind is out the window. Landing in front gives just about the same landing situation as landing behind did before. Were I to keep this going forward I'd have to figure out how to incorporate leg slam as an option in here somewhere in order to control wakeup buttons. But I haven't got that far yet. For now this is a matchup where I'll end juggles in 21, 21u4 or F+2, 121 leg grab depending on positioning. Not the end of the world, relatively simple adjustment to make.

But now I'm not exactly sure where to stand. The matchup calculus has changed. Do I allow her into range of F112? I mean it's still a rough situation but only low is guaranteed. Plus low into full combo is even harder meaning drops and suboptimal punishes are more likely if I give that up. If I don't fear the following mixup, doesn't that mean F112 is less scary? Doesn't that mean that I should base less of my gameplan around whiff punishing and just get in there and mix it up? I'm not sure. If I give her the range that I was giving her before and just play the match out as I was doing, don't I allow her to get an unearned advantage by letting her walk me down and not letting me get to the corner? She still outdamages me so I have to play carefully but HOW carefully is optimal?

I don't know.

It's going to take a lot of match experience first off just to test how the changes actually play out, then once I make a decision I'm going to have to play even more to build muscle memory and make sure I'm making the right decision over and over. As much as I wish I could just delete things from my brain, I'm not a computer, muscle memory/reversion to old habits is a real thing. This will take time.

Instinctively I still think D'Vorah probably beats Sonya, although it did get better. But maybe I'm wrong. I just don't know and given that the online is so bad, I don't even know how I can test it going forward since I probably won't be able to get a good long casual set with a D'Vorah until I actually get into Vegas next week.

Ultradavid mentioned that what he hates most in games is uncertainty. He and I have a pretty similar attitude on games (play the same characters in some games also) so I agree with him on that but what I hate even more than that is wasted time. I spent a lot of time working on this matchup because I assessed D'Vorah pre 6/23 as a very strong character going forward. Now I feel like this time was not just wasted but detrimental to me going forward as I'm going to be playing the matchup incorrectly for a little while until I get adjusted.

Similarly let's look at vs. Tempest Kung Lao since it features a similar situation. Previously I gave him space like I gave D'Vorah because I didn't want him to get his pressure started. But the most recent patch from a couple days ago weakened his frame advantage off MB hat and I saw a video where Quan Chi uppercutted him out of the resulting string. Can Sonya do that? If Quan Chi can uppercut that means I can also buffer leg grab from crouch. Pretty sure at least. I honestly don't know, it's written on my “stuff to look at” excel list. I don't even know HOW different that match is yet because I haven't put in the time yet. Also I don't have to worry about changing my juggle and my setups because I respected his wakeup too much to mess with empty divekick setups. So at least I have that going for me, only 2 major points of uncertainty going forward.

Again, note that my character is almost completely unchanged. I've been lucky. Far luckier than if I had chosen a different character to work on 2 months ago. Doing this (necessary) process if I was a Scorpion player and not even sure of my character's own options just adds an extra level of headache.

This is what I want to avoid. I don't want to do this re-evaluation process every 2 weeks until NRS decides they're “done”. This is what it's going to take to be a top player at this game, something that doesn't happen at ANY OTHER MAJOR STUDIO'S games. Actually multiply that by 3 because I'm pretty sure you need at least 3 characters to insulate yourself from the patching process. It's just too much.

As someone who's competed at the very top levels of other games I know what kind of work it takes to be a top player at a game. It's an intimidating process even without the ground shifting out from under you on a bi-weekly basis. Say what you will about me, but after Evo I just don't think this is for me.

And as I said before, this is one man's opinion but as the falling entrant and viewer numbers show, I am not alone. Not by a longshot.
Can not like this post more.
 

I GOT HANDS

Official Infrared Scorp wid gapless Wi-Fi pressure
Pretty sure when they're putting a couple of million into a game they have a decent say, and not having a lifecycle of a game for 6+ years like SF4 is most likely definitely one of them.
"We're making an executive decision - we have decided you aren't allowed to work on this game because we don't want it to be good and make us more money, at the cost of literally nothing on our end"

This literally makes no sense. Your post is very wrong. If there is no patching after 6 months, it's because NRS has decided they no longer care.
 

Shark Tank

I don't actually play these games
"We're making an executive decision - we have decided you aren't allowed to work on this game because we don't want it to be good and make us more money, at the cost of literally nothing on our end"

This literally makes no sense. Your post is very wrong. If there is no patching after 6 months, it's because NRS has decided they no longer care.
"We don't want to to you to work on this game anymore re-coding and release more patches, because there is virtually is no more money flowing in from it and we'd rather devote all our resources to get Injustice 2 out on our deadline which would probably make a shitton more money than expansion releases dedicated at a few nerds on tym."

By the way I'm sure Paulo wouldn't mind balancing MKX for however long as long as they paid him for it. I don't think the designers arbitrarily stop caring about a huge project they worked on for 3 years after 6 months. Them not caring isn't particularly the issue.
 
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haketh

Noob
on paper this seems like a fair old school vs new school mentality sort of debate

in reality its a good amount of players from other scenes complaining about NRS games are not the way they want them to be for various different reasons, one of the main reasons being the patching style

if these people ACTUALLY gave a fuck, they'd accept the game for what it is, whether it be balanced or unbalanced
they can simply drop the game if they don't like it/not having fun but don't go around acting all pretentious and bitching about the way NRS games are handled -> this has been going on for 5 years now

if i pick up a different fighting game i wouldn't bitch about how the devs handle their game. you don't have to believe me
Their are plenty of people who give a fuck that don't like the patching system or eLaw we wouldn't be here debating.
 

Mortal Komhat

Worst Well-Established Goro Player Ever
honestly the whole patching system thing is a moot debate.

because NRS's patching style changes per game. they wouldn't have done that last patch in I:GAU or MK9 territory.
 

Vilén

too smart to play MKX
THIS

If a game isn't ready, they shouldn't release it.
Learning stuff is fun. Relearning... nah. Better find something new for our brains.
The paradox here is that I BELIEVE IN THE PATCHING PROCESS. It should be implemented. Just (ideally) for different reasons other than huge swaths of people who bought your game feel like playing it is a heartbreaking nightmare.

Every scene has crying, the difference is this scene's tears are poured directly into the game. Blah blah blah great power blah blah blah great responsibility. I'll be damned if I haven't agreed with almost... like every single goddamn complaint I've read on this site. I think some of the early ice clone tears were SUPER stupid but that's about it. I'm glad they patched that stuff.

"I'M QUITTING BECAUSE OF PATCHING" can also be interpreted as quitting because you don't want to keep up with a game that actually needs the constant patching. A lot of these changes are kinda just getting the game to a logical starting point. MKX at launch was what I expected MK9 to be. It was like they unlearned vital shit.