MK9. Dash cancelling (Eventhough run cancelling is an adequate substitute).
The implementation of armored moves seemed experimental in MK9, it kinda just semed like they never game it much thought, and were just like, "ok let's give this move armor, sound good? ok cool." MKX took a step in the right direction by giving everyone armored options.
That said, the oki game is WAY too inconsistent in MKX. Sure, you have tech rolling, wake up back dashing, wakeup armor for everyone, etc... but that doesn't even matter when certain characters have braindead moves that can safely stuff your armored reversals, and single hit normals that will randomly ignore armored reversals after HKD and stuff them when they're not supposed to. Invincible frames on regular wakeups does not equal zero oki. See SF4.
MKX has inconsistent and illogical move properties from one character to the next. Why do some characters have like 13 frame SAFE OH / Low starters when others are triple the frames and punishable? Why do variation specific SAFE specials for some characters grant ridiculous frame advantage while similar variation specific specials for others are punishable and are minus on hit? Why are there entire variations that are rendered completely useless because of the basic movesets of other characters? And why in the ever loving fuck is throw teching still a guess? It was the same in MK9, I know.. but that is the single thing I would choose to change about this game. No one likes it.
MK9 had significantly less bugs at release than MKX. I don't think that can be denied. punishable on hit specials, wiff on hit specials, wiff on hit normals (that still exists), walking right through clones, incorrect damage scaling, broken interactables ignoring block stun, sliding across the stage, meter gain bugs, getting stuck in the air, multiple infinites, etc.
The penalty for block breaker and breakers in general makes no sense. When some characters require meter use to be effective offensively when others do not, a static penalty for breaker use means that the more meter dependent characters are punished more severely in terms of effectiveness for using one.
There are characters with a laundry list of strings while others have like 4. There are SEVERAL strings that have zero practical use whatsoever in actual game play.
The MKX roster is unappealing and lazy. People's kids? new characters that aren't even good enough to use? Give me Smoke, Kabal, Cyrax, Sektor, Noob, Rain, Nightwolf, and Shang Tsung. Predator and Jason as DLC is fucking stupid.
MKX SHOULD have been the better game, but it's just not.
