Discussion Patches overwhelmingly help NRS games not hurt them

The developer is NRS. I'm talking about the individual design team such as Paulo and John. If Ed is like "no, I want you guys focusing on this to make some more big paychecks in a couple years" he does dictate what those guys do. NRS isn't just the guys making the game lol. Paulo can't just make patches no questions asked

 

I never once mentioned Paulo.

All I've said is that we can't blame Warner Brothers for this, and the decision is NRS's.



How does that statement, in any way, not make any sense? Because what you just said agrees with it.

 

You bring up some good points that I would like to address. Yes NRS has all the data and with enough testing they could probably find a lot of this stuff before release...if they had time. NRS has deadlines to meet, content they need to make sure is working, and a bunch of other stuff we take for granted. Balance is the last thing to address.

And yes I agree with you. NRS is more focused on sales than gameplay. They are a business first though. That's how it should be. NRS sold millions upon millions of copies. They made Warner Bros. millions of dollars. They are a successful business. They focus on sales to the casual player first, then then the tournament player second.

It's not want people want to hear, but that's how it should be. We as tournament players can't take such a selfish attitude of demanding that NRS cater to the 3% of the people that buy their game before the other 97%. That's ludicrous. And the fact NRS spends months watching us play and reading our complaints in forums and hearing them out should be considered a blessing. Not a detriment.

NRS with their games makes more money than Street Fighter and Marvel. That's a fact. Capcom was in so much trouble that Sony had to bail them out in order for them to make SFV.

NRS is doing better than Capcom. Their business model is working while Capcom pretty much relies on their legacy to stay afloat. We don't have to worry about NRS going under because they know how to make money first, and then make their game competitive second.

All the more reason NRS's way of doing things should be considered a good thing. Not a bad thing.

 

Because these decisions involve multiple parts of NRS. It's dishonest to say that NRS just doesn't want to patch things further, because many of the game designers probably do. It's marketing&executive teams that trump those decisions, though, because that isn't what makes them more money.

 

This, so much. At the end of the day, this boils down to players who are allegedly quitting/have quit the game cause of the patching (or play other games predominantly) telling a lot of dedicated NRS gamers that no, they dont know they game yet. No, you cant come to the conclusion that something is "broke" until X numbers of months cause youre too dumb.

Even if they're right, who says we want that? Why do we have to want to go to the lab and spends hours upon hours for long periods of time figuring out ways around things that we feel are obviously bullshit strong and the character would be perfectly fine without. Why is the street fighter way the right way? Like other people have said before, the patching undoubtedly alienates people. But I was alienated from SF4 because of how stale it felt and how the strong things were abused for long periods of time. Oh and of course, there's no guarantee Capcom will actually address the problems you feel you be address, but dont worry, they'll get to your character in the next edition, just wait a year. Theres no way to make everyone happy. Both system's cater to different mentalities/business models/w.e. You can only hope that you make a game good enough that it will have a solid player base for years to come.

 

The equivalent of what Viscant is saying would be a high level, or famous NRS player coming into SF5 and being like, if they don't patch this game frequently and often I am going to quit this game. To be honest I can't think of any NRS player doing that.

I cannot disagree with this more. Lets say I have every intention of playing SF5 seriously. I start playing the game and lets say there is something I don't like. I do everything I can to voice how much I hate this certain thing and that is should be changed immediately or I am quitting. Lets also say for whatever reason I got the change I wanted. 1 month later I could end up quitting because lets say I find 3 other things I don't like. Why should I be catered to when I haven't proven I have the games best interest in mind? I will end it with 2 examples.

Example 1: BAD

"I really hate "some random thing." This MUST be taken out or I am quitting SF5." This new person to the scene should not have any sway whatsoever.

Example 2: GOOD.

"I am new to competitive Street Fighter. I really don't understand this "some random thing." Can someone help me understand why Capcom made it like this?

Example 2 this person should be treated with respect and helped out. Example 1 that person should be told "good riddance, we don't need your kind here."

The idea that my opinion on SF5 should have equal importance as say Justin Wong's opinion... that is just absurd to me. He has proven he will play his game and support it to the very end. What have I ever done?

 

I refuse to believe that making an enjoyable, well-polished game and making money are mutually exclusive. It's that kind of thinking that has created the predatory gaming environment we're dealing with today.

 

Simple solution to the CEO incident: don't use the new patch that came out days before the tournament. NRS can drop a patch whenever they want but nobody says you have to use it right away.

 

Can we all just agree that the NETCODE is what needs to be balanced?

Im not a fan of overpatching, but every other fg I play, last gen or this one has better netcode. Its not right.

 

So if, say, Pig started playing SF and said something like "dizzy mechanics are dumb", there wouldn't be people telling him he's an idiot who doesn't understand these games & their history because he just plays scrubby NRS games?

There's an extensive history of Capcom players especially talking down on the NRS scene and acting superior. Saying otherwise is blatantly untrue. We heard for years how mk9's not a real fighting game because it has a block button lol. But it's a problem with us when we didn't take them seriously because they didn't understand how removing it would impact the game design?

I actually love when top players from other scenes play our game, btw. I and many others were extremely excited seeing Ryan Hart announced for the Fatal 8. I really wanted Fab to keep playing Injustice so we could share tech. I love having Coach Steve and Arturo around up here. It's just annoying when certain guys act arrogant. Like I'll listen to someone like Coach Steve because he really devotes time to our game and shows it with his great play. He's actually stated he doesn't mind the patches and has called for certain changes. But then there's guys like Fchamp and Floe, who have previously been very disrespectful to our scene, acting like we're dumb and patching's the problem. I honestly don't care if those guys play or not, but with how mudslinging can unfairly affect a game's scene and perception, why shouldn't I be annoyed by that?

 

it's not "his" game, just like mkx is not "your" game. we are not tribes! or at least, i'm not in a tribe. idk how you view yourself, i suppose

 

To be fair, your connection is garbage.

 

It's not at all dishonest. I'm not talking about individual game designers, it's only you doing that, I'm talking about NRS as an entity, In relation to Warner Brothers.

The original guy was saying that it's Warner Brothers fault, which you agree it is not. You also agree that it is NRS's fault, you are just arguing that there is individual game designers amongst the team who would want to keep patching. Something which is PURE speculation of course, but let's give you the benefit of the doubt here, because its IRRELEVANT to the argument, as all I said is that we can't blame WB, the decision is squarely NRS's.

"Many of the game designers PROBABLY want to keep patching it" Those are your words, and even if they weren't just speculation they STILL would be absolutely no counter to the statement "NRS is the entity who makes the decision on whether to keep patching or not".

Why you felt the need to quote my post and say "that doesn't make any sense at all!" is beyond me, since you are agreeing with more of what I said than what the guy I was explaining it to was saying. Although, it strongly seems as though you were agreeing with him about WB originally, and now that you've been proven wrong are just back-pedalling and changing your statement HARD to avoid being wrong, but we'll give you the benefit of the doubt here again as well.


People like you will bend over backwards to white knight for NRS. It's no wonder this is the only triple A game in 2015 that hasn't felt the need to move with the times. They lock out pre-order content like its 2015, but give you servers like its 1995, and abandon games 6 months after development while other competitive communities are still patching games from 5 years ago. Why? Because people like you and the other guy defend them, "It's not NRS's decision!" which is 100% wrong. There is nothing to be gained by supporting their bad practice dude

 

Addressing Slips's points

1.

“I know back in the MvC2 days this would be a valid argument because she'd have a counter and that is his sense of balance “


If it was just one character, fine. But Tempest KL did well against her also, seemed like it was a better match than Sub's match against her. Some Tanya players previously complained about Scorpion and Ermac. Personally I thought those complaints weren't warranted but eh, what do I know. She'd been out less than a month before the nerf bat whacked her upside the head. As I've already shown you, it takes years to actually know what a matchup is going to look like at high level. Who's to say what the matchups actually would have ended up being. And think about it, most people only had access to her for a couple weeks before the pre-CEO nerf. Did the best Scorpion and Ermac players in the world play the match out against the best Tanyas yet? What if some of her dominance was just general unfamiliarity and people would have figured it out in time? Again I point out that she was only generally available for THREE WEEKS before she was deemed the greatest and most dangerous thing ever. You don't know what would have happened with her if she was allowed to breathe and now we never will know that.

“Balance is being able to pick whatever character you want and have a reasonable chance to beat any character picked against you “

I'd like that too. I'd also like a pony and an ice cream cone.

It's unrealistic and childish to think any fighting game can achieve that. It's just not possible. SFAE2012 was is possibly the best balanced modern fighting game ever and still had a handful of characters generally assumed to be useless (lucky me, I played Blanka and Dee Jay, 2 out of the bottom 4). By your definition that game wasn't balanced. That's why your definition is ridiculous. Incidentally as I pointed out in my first post, Dudley was in that group until Smug came along. So I mean...

Also it's bad game design to prioritize character balance over strategic balance. History has shown us that people will put up with games with mediocre or even horrendous character balance as long as there's balance among strategic styles. By the percentages, MvC2 is one of the worst balanced games of all time. Sentinel beats about 40 out of 56 characters just by flying backwards and hitting buttons. It's also one of the most beloved fighting games ever because there's so much you can do in the game with a rich strategic balance. The fact that Hayato/Roll/Amingo can't compete means nothing to the players.

2.

“I'm not sure how or why Viscant can say the patching strategy failed at CEO. Yea, Tanya was nerfed previously before CEO and she still dominated the tournament. So we should've left Tanya the way she was? Even MORE broke and that would've proven patches are fine? Wouldn't she have just dominated even more? I don't even understand how that argument makes sense. “

You don't know what would have happened in a patchless environment. Would a fully powered Hellfire Scorpion have done well against her? I don't think so, I thought the Tanyas complaining about the Scorpion matchup were just whining but I really don't know. The non nerfed Grandmaster Sub would have done better, but again, I just think that, I don't know that. You don't know either.

What we DO know is that the version we got was the least interesting to watch of the majors we've had so far, most of which have been tremendous. I think I enjoyed the top 32 MKX at Combo Breaker more than any other game featured and it was a fantastic tournament from start to finish. CEO's was not as good. Denying that the patch cycle played a part in this is naivete at best, willful ignorance in order to prove a point being much more likely.

3.
“Viscant mentions how Fisticuffs Johnny got nerfed and he believes the reason was because NRS didn't want people to laugh at their game. Or, maybe it was nerfed because it really was too powerful. It was looked into. Some characters who didn't have good armor, slow pokes and had a beefy hitbox could do next to nothing to get out of his b12121 in the corner. Characters like Quan Chi, Erron Black, Takeda, ect. literally had to block about ten b12's and at any point Cage could stagger them, reset the spacing to do 10 more, an overhead that launches or a low that would also reset the b1212 guessing game”

I don't even know where to begin here.

This argument would hold a whole lot more water if what prompted the nerf (DJT vs. SonicFox) didn't end up going SonicFox's way.

“Maybe 3 years from now we'll find a glitch where you can use a just frame block breaker with no meter on the 13th frame of block stun that the devs didn't know about and it'll all be ok. Lets wait and see”

3 years? It took SonicFox roughly 90 minutes real time without any training mode or coaching to go from “it looks like I have no idea what to do against this” to “beating DJT's Cage to the point where he had to switch Kung Lao at the end of grand finals”. All with a character that YOU YOURSELF said “could do next to nothing” in that matchup. Something's not adding up here!

See this is what I'm talking about. I don't want to come across as disrespectful or (gasp) arrogant here but this is the worst kind of reaction. It's not just knee jerk in reaction to an event that just happened, it's not just presumptive assuming that since people couldn't deal with it now that they'd never figure it out, it's not even supported by actual events!

And hey maybe you're right. Maybe Johnny Cage was going rise in the ranks and become a strong character based around this strategy (even though all the other top tiers don't seem to have any trouble dealing with him). Maybe. But we'll never know now.

4.
“Injustice and MK9 didn't die because they were awful games”

Didn't say they were. I respected both of those games and played them casually and then semi-competitively for a bit. That's actually the opposite of my point. NRS makes fine games, how come they die off so quickly?

“Actually, MK9 still had a decent following deep into Injustice's lifespan”

Stream numbers, entrant numbers and community interest at live events tell otherwise. It's like you think I didn't have occasion to monitor these things.

“Yes, UMvC3 and SFIV are still being played. They are still going. Why? Because there aren't any sequels to them released yet”

Injustice was as much a sequel to MK9 as MvC3 was to SF4. SF4 was 2.5 years deep into its lifespan when Marvel came out. SF4 carried on just fine. SF4 WAS a sequel to 3s/CvS2 but 3s carried on semi-competitively and even somewhat seriously in Japan. MvC3 took a lot of interest away from MvC2 but MvC2 still gets played in exhibition situations. Going to an even more apples to apples comparison, Soul Calibur 2 didn't kill off interest in Tekken 4 (you were there, you know that maybe it even should have, I sincerely regret the time I spent on T4). MvC2, 3s, GGAC all have a healthier scene now than Injustice does now despite those games being further away from their heyday than Injustice. Now either you think Injustice is an awful game (which you just said you didn't) or we're going to have to seriously consider why Injustice tailed off as hard as it did.

5.

“Viscant says he tries and keep her at the tip of Sonya's f2 range because if she got in range of D'Vorah's f1 she'd be in trouble. How has that changed? D'Vorah still gets the advantage after f1 on block, we still have to guess”

Not necessarily. What's guaranteed on block after the wasp cancel is lower. Overhead no longer jails. Hard before, impossible now (note, I'm going off the numbers on the 6/23 patch). So this changes the calculus of the match. Whereas before it was a guess now the option select that I was using against people who weren't on perfect timing (low block OS into backdash) is now a functioning OS against an immediately timed action. In theory. Obviously the D'Vorah can blow that up just by altering their timing but OS's like that are a useful tool especially to someone like me who can't reliably count on making a reaction block. Also this opens up the possibility of OS ing leg slam instead of back dash. I'm not quite sure if the situation is scary enough to warrant the use of a meter, which I feel like I have to guard carefully in this matchup. These are things that have to be worked out through match play against other strong players, not training mode and MS Excel.

If I'm not scared of F1 and the followup options then that means I don't have to rely on whiff punishing as my primary way of generating damage which is an uncomfortable way of playing Sonya against good players since it's the equivalent of hanging a sign around my neck saying “I'M LOOKING TO WHIFF PUNISH YOU WITH DIVEKICK, IF YOU COULD CO-OPERATE AND GET WILD THAT WOULD BE GREAT”. It's more a strategy borne out of necessity than any great desire to play like that. It means I can go back to the game I'm most comfortable with, mindless violence.

Nobody's making this out like it's a bad matchup now. I said myself that the matchup got better even if I still kinda sorta think D'Vorah is still ahead in the matchup. But it means I have to relearn a matchup. If it turns out that the most optimal way to play Sonya/D'Vorah now is rushdown and that I don't have to be as afraid of F1 and followup options because I can defend them reliably then playing a whiff punishing game is sub-optimal strategy and I am giving away positioning, attacker's advantage and possibly in the end, games and matches.

The patch has definitely forced a period of evaluation and possibly a fundamental change in the tenor of the match. That is what I'm saying and I don't think you can deny that. The problem is that because I studied that match a month ago, I'm actually WORSE OFF right now than if I had only studied it casually because what was “smart play” (theoretically--I've been criticized by strong players for being overly passive in that match even though I was winning those matches) before is now sub-optimal play.

You don't see a problem with that because of your ideology and affiliation. The overwhelming majority of competitive fighting gaming disagrees. Try to understand.

“I love how says he saw a Quan Chi uppercut in between KL's mb hat into a string and asked, 'Can Sonya do that? I don't know,' like it's gonna be the next segment on Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries. Well that's what training mode is for dude. It will literally take 3 minutes or less to answer that question. But I guess it's easier to never look into it, lose to someone in a tournament and blame NRS for patching something that actually made it easier on you. For someone who says they are trying to play our game seriously, that's incredibly lazy and is evidence he's clearly not“

Holy assumptions and projections Batman!

I threw out the uncertainty because I genuinely didn't know the answer as of that time. When I come across something interesting gameplay wise or something I don't fully understand I write it down in Excel and tackle things in order. Most important things, things pertaining to main character and sub character, overall gameplay mechanics, etc. All that stuff goes on the top worksheet and gets dealt with first. Combo video stuff, stuff for characters I don't play and out of the current tournament rotation go on lower sheets, etc. The system works fine, it got me through Marvel, one of the most homework intensive games I've ever tried to play.

And yes the situation takes about 5 minutes to fully flesh out, just to set up the situation and test responses. The reason that I didn't know the answer offhand even though it's clearly a top worksheet kind of question?

Because I'm still not done dealing with the backlog in the patch before that! I still had substantive homework from 6/23's patch, handling matchups, oki setups (spent a lot of time trying to salvage my F+2, 124 setup—it didn't go well) and the changes to Scorpion since I like that character and was considering subbing him.

This is the entire reason this whole thing started. I'm not done exploring the old changes at anything above a casual “oh I guess this does this now” level and I have new changes dumped into my lap. And this is supposed to be OK? It's not OK with me, let the damn game breathe.

6.
“I am grateful for these changes. That stupid broke- *ahem* I mean "Top Tier meta" is not fun to play against and is the type of stuff that makes people not want to play because of how insane it is. We should be THANKING Paulo for making these changes. Not crucifying him. The game is better, more fun and more balanced because of them.”

And here we're getting to the crux of this.

The tone has changed from “this can never be beaten and must be changed because nobody will ever stop it” to “playing against top tier isn't fun for me, nerf plz k thx bbl”. Also it's hypothetical that people quit if the game isn't patched. It's factual that people quit if the game is overpatched.

This is immediately followed up by.

“For some reason we have a higher work ethic than the great Viscant “

“But if we know our favorite character's are useless in tournament play we would stop playing “

lol, I don't even need to say anything here just...lol

“Sorry our standard for balance is higher than theirs.”

Your standard as previously defined in your own words has yet to be reached in this game. Or any previous NRS game. Or any fighting game in 25 years. Maybe it's time for a new standard.


You have a personal (and I'm not exposing anything anyone doesn't already know by pointing out that you at one time had a professional) interest in NRS and their games. So I don't expect to change your mind. I'm not sure you read, digested or understood my examples about how older and newer games showed dramatic balance changes after months and years because after those posts you haven't changed your tune or your tone one bit. You either don't understand that or don't want to understand that and I don't care enough at this point to figure out which.

You're also not going to change my mind. I'm giving up this game because the patch cycle is simply out of control. To repeat what I said earlier, I wasn't even close to done with my homework from 6/23 when an entirely new patch came out. That's not acceptable. I don't want to have to constantly re-evaluate critical matchups every 2 or 3 weeks because something was changed. I don't want to deal with random stealth changes not listed on the patch notes and lose a match because something was changed from -10 to -6 and I'm now doing the wrong punish.

So I mean in a lot of ways this argument is pointless and I don't see much need to respond again, especially if I'm going to get my account screwed with again.

So I'll just close with this.

You stated yourself, this is your passion. This is love for you. Great. No really, no sarcasm, no kappa. Great. Glad you're happy. This is why you put up with the patch system and convince yourself that it's what's best, this passion and this love.

But you need to understand that a big part of what you love is also what drives other people away. I'm far from an NRS hater, I liked MK9 quite a bit before the patch cycle got started and gave Injustice a chance also (Scorpion nerf basically killed the game for me and I never played seriously again). NRS makes good games and they also manage to damage their games through the patch cycle. People don't like having their hard work wasted.

MKX at one time had a chance to be the biggest fighting game in America and to topple SF4. Secretly I was kind of hoping that would happen. Despite being painted as a Capcom fanboy here, I'm mostly ambivalent towards SF4, it's a really well made game that always brings the goods in tournaments and all but I'm tired of it and eagerly looking forward to something new. If MKX had handled patching better then maybe it could have been that game. But it's probably already too late.

This game has averaged a patch or a hotfix about 2 weeks since the first major patch on 4-21. (4-21, 5-14, 5-20, 6-1, 6-23, 7-2). Some minor, some major. And this train is not slowing down any time soon, IIRC there's another one coming next week, making for an absurd 3 patches in 3 weeks unless the 7-2 one replaced it. You're OK with this. This is love to you.

But it isn't to the rest of us. And that's why the numbers are dropping and why they look to drop even further still. NRS makes great games, I just wish they'd treat them better and not drive the playerbase away.

 

Wait, wasn't I originally talking about how updating the game doesn't do much for them financially? I'm not backpedalling on anything I was saying earlier lol.

My problem was just the idea that they don't care about it, which you stated. When I know many within NRS actually do care about the competitive health of the game. It's just not what makes the money, unfortunately. I'm not white knighting when I'm agreeing that their overall concern is profit.

 

hohoho i bite and i bite and this steak just keeps splashing my face with juice

 

So we're bringing back the juicy inside meme?

 

For one thing I'm sure the best Scorpion we've seen so far (MIT) has played REO's Tanya down at Yomi. And it looks like he'd rather play the mirror.

So Sub, characters with really good mobility tools, and possibly the #2 character might have been fine against Tanya. Where did that leave everyone else? As I've said before, we can understand how some patched matchups would've ended up without patches after years of mk9+injustice. Because some things in NRS games especially have pretty easy-to-understand counters. Either you have a hard counter, a read-based counter, or you're at an extreme disadvantage against something. Most of what we want patched involves things where most characters are in the third category. The second category is something I understand after years of playing a lesser character at a high level, and that's when there's debate in the patches, depending on the risk-reward levels of potential counters.

That's why Slips made the point of "maybe we'll find some glitch that lets us deal with something", because sometimes there's nothing we can just figure out with work.

As stated before in this thread, Injustice was actually one of the most balanced games in a while after the final patch. One final small patch down the line would've made it amazing. We had two bottom 10 characters in the top 8 at Evo 2014. In fact, every character except maybe Joker and Cyborg made major noise at some point.

Let's look at the probable bottom 10 (not listing this in order I don't want to argue tier lists lol) -

Catwoman - top 8 at Evo, top 3 at MLG, Final Round, I think UFGT?
Shazam - Won Texas Showdown, top 8 at CEO, 9th at Evo
Green Arrow - Top 8 at CEO 2014, WB 2015, multiple top 8's prepatch
Ares - Top 8 Civil War (I think), DTN, multiple top 16's
Scorpion - not much post-patch I remember
Joker - nothing major
Cyborg - nothing major
Hawkgirl - Won NEC 2013, top 8 at KIT and Evo last year
Harley - Top 3 KIT 2014, top 8 Summer Jam (I think there was another? sorry for forgetting)
Grundy - Top 8 NEC 2013, top 8 MLG, WCW

Every character above that, whether you disagree with this bottom 10 or not, has a major top 8 showing or at least close to it (I believe all have made top 8s). Considering how crazy of a game it was in its mechanics, that's a pretty good achievement.

We're not asking for 5-5's across the board. We just don't want a super top-heavy game, which is where MKX was likely headed.

I think we can just agree to disagree on that. Maybe that's the main problem here. But I don't think that would be a game that could continue to grow in the modern era, because people like variety. People like to play the characters they like, and when doing so is pointless it can really turn some people off. Sonicfox, undoubtedly one of our greatest players, switched to Tanya because there was no point in playing Erron Black (a very good character) with her in the game. And that sucks. As great as their matches can be, a lot of people don't want to just watch DJT's Lao vs Tanya over and over again. Even if everyone picked up those two characters, I highly disagree that it would be better for the game.

I was actually a huge stream monster for Marvel for a long time. Sometimes I'd even skip watching an NRS game's pools to watch it when I'm not at the tournament. But the game's been falling because shit's been incredibly stale and there's no hope for an update. I don't even know who won CEO this year, because I'm sick of seeing Morridoom, Zero, Vergil, etc no matter how high level the play is. Jan is a breath of fresh air just because he plays a MID TIER team. That's insane, it's not interesting, and it's not a game most of us want to play long-term.

I don't remember exactly but wasn't Sonic just countering sometimes with armor? I know the other two he listed had armor moves+normals too slow to do anything.

Both of those games actually held the third highest entrants at majors (behind SF and Marvel) pretty consistently. We're a relatively young competitive community, similar to KI, which is a main reason our numbers don't match them yet. Part of the reason we struggle to equal Capcom games is because of the 10+ years of strong competitive history Marvel+SF had before us. I'm not using that as an excuse, we just can't suddenly gain similar numbers of dedicated competitive players to match that. Injustice lost a lot of core players simply because it wasn't an MK game (let's be serious we have a lot of people who are just MK fanboys and just want to play MK whether it's good or bad). But it was still a strong scene. Despite all that, the quick releases are pretty much the reason we drop our previous games. I truly enjoyed Injustice, but I'd rather invest my time in MKX right now because it's the new thing and will naturally have more players because of that. That's fine if you disagree with that but I don't really think it's a knock on the games themselves.

The majority of those disagreeing don't really play MKX or NRS games much. The overwhelming majority of those playing this game disagree with you. I think you have a disconnect because most of your peers are these guys picking up MKX as a side game. The type of strategies you're talking about btw still apply, it's just that you can do this or optimize your options better now. It doesn't require massive relearning.

I honestly think the biggest thing that's been driving people away from MKX is the fundamental gameplay. The 50/50's, lesser zoning options, and rushdown-heavy type of style. That's the understanding I've gotten from talking to a lot of people who were ready to devote themselves to this game. If anything, most of them only start to give it second chances because of patches. That's fine if they don't like it, I'm going to keep playing regardless. But most of these guys complaining about the patches (and maybe you're truly not one of them) are doing so because they don't want to keep up with it, because they're not going to play it seriously anyway. Just like they stopped playing Persona, UNIEL, TTT2, KI, etc. This happens with every game, we knew some would drop off regardless. There's just an excuse they can give this time, as accusatory as that may sound. With many it's probably true. We mostly don't take them seriously because we know the patches are largely good.

But I doubt this game will die anytime soon. We just had a huge number of entrants at CEO and have over 1100 people registered for MKX at Evo. With MK9 and Injustice's history, we've seen we can hold our community strong after much weaker starts. If anything, our community's looking better than it's ever been. Sure, we probably won't get 1100 people next year, every game loses people, but will MKX be back next year? I dare you to say it won't. And it'll probably be a better game, too.

 

you sir need to share that dank kush you been smoking.

i've always been a proponent that goro isn't as shit tier as people make him out to be (trust me I've played a real shitter aka Dee Jay aka SF4 Kano), but no fucking way did he receive buffs on the level of kitana, kenshi and even shinnok.

also i do not think any of you can even speak on the relationship between nrs and wb unless you are in the know, in which case you can't actually speak of it.

 

I think every single one of the previous patches was needed, some characters were completely trash while others had dumb stuff, I think we have reached the point where every single character has at least 1 completely viable variation, with some being stronger than others but nothing is trash or OP.

With that said, I think it's time to take a break from patches for a few weeks or months. This version of the game is very good IMO, some variations still need a lot of help but I guess people can just play the stronger variation until the final patch comes out.

EDIT: unless is a netcode patch tho <3

 

I think it's the fact that there's no hope for another one, similar to the position Marvel's in now. It's not the constant patching. If we could expect a patch in something like a year after the usual final one in the Fall, I think some people who leave would be more inclined to stay. But it's mostly people not satisfied with the game mechanics themselves