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Can MK be balanced?

Aof

Noob
I started playing MK at the arcades. I continued with MK2 at the arcades, and then, as I didn't had as much time as before, MK3 and MK4 on the PC. When the action changed to the consoles, I stopped playing.
The action, the thematic, the sound of the impact of the punches and kicks when connecting, the fatalities, the cool characters, the graphics, etc. are some of the things that made me like the game.
However, one of the greatest things about it was the matches against other people. In the arcades was special, because your opponent was there, just beside you. Pushes from some opponents, others that went into rage fits when they lose and turned off the machine with the switch under the cabinet, anticipation to the moves by looking and hearing the opponent movements on the stick and buttons, etc. Even though the first title was limited, people learned the ins and outs of each and every movement and where able to use them at the exact proper moments. I had and saw great matches.
When advancing through the series, it become apparent that some characters had a clear advantage over others, or some movements that could be abused. A great example was Mileena in MK2, who could spam her sai non stop.

So after a lot of years, I started playing MK again now that it became available for PC. It became apparent very fast that some characters had some disadvantages and some advantages. I also saw a lot of the matches at this year EVO. I was surprised to see that some things that a lot of players considered unfair or broken 2 decades ago, here was almost the norm, like spamming projectiles non stop. 90% kombos. I kind of understand why it doesn't have as big as a player scene as others like SF.
Do not misunderstand me, the level of the players was phenomenal, and top players played with the top characters, so any unfairness between them becomes kind of balanced (congratulations to the winner DJT by the way, great playing)

But something that really irks and that saddens me at the same time, is that at high level play, you only have less than half the characters to choose from, else you put yourself at a disadvantage. I would love to see a MK game where people can use their favorite character and have a fair match and be competitive. I would love to see someone winning a final with Sub-Zero, or Scorpion.

So, is it possible to make MK a balanced game? Or does it nature, with a lot of very particular and special characters makes that very difficult or almost impossible?
What does it take?
 

Jeffreys

Grundy think you handsome!
It is possible with patches, pre patch sub zero was a top 5 character. Now he is bottom 10.
 
It is possible with patches, pre patch sub zero was a top 5 character. Now he is bottom 10.

prepatch sub still loses to kenshi, kabal, cyrax, kitana, freddy krueger, skarlet, kung lao and maybe more. sure a lot of characters didnt have armor but neither did subzero remember that. his damage and 22 was better but the character was high mid at best.
 

Flagg

Champion
It makes you wonder, if Capcom can tirelesly update SF IV, with Hyper on the horizon, why cant NRS do a UMK9?

I'm sure it wont happen, as its a shame. Injustice is cool, but I still prefer MK. I feel that rather than play both games, this community just shifted straight from one game to another.

Makes you wonder, if UMK9 came out or when MK 10 hits, will Injustice be dropped like a hot potato?
 

Prinz

watch?v=a8PEVV6tt14
Yes, it's possible. Make Jade flash through Kenshi's zoning and it's balanced.
 

Aof

Noob
But what can assure you that game will be balanced?
As I said, I see some problems that were present already 2 decades ago.
And as Flagg said, why doesn't NRS patch the game? Do we really need to wait for another game for that? If they didn't do it for this game, what makes you think they will do it for the next?
 

Jimmypotato

Mid Tier
But what can assure you that game will be balanced?
As I said, I see some problems that were present already 2 decades ago.
And as Flagg said, why doesn't NRS patch the game? Do we really need to wait for another game for that? If they didn't do it for this game, what makes you think they will do it for the next?

that game, and the base of that game, is fuckin crap and broken already, there is no reason to work on patching it. it's glitchy and probably just a sloppy mess of shit in it's coding department.

With Injustice they took leaps and bounds ahead in the department of making a game that actually works properly.

I expect MK10 to make the next leap and get closer to something that works, and something that is relatively balanced.


Either way, these are fighting games, there will always be a top tier, mid tier, and low tier. it's just the way it is.

If someone wanted complete balance, we would play a game with 1 fighter to choose from. And thats dumb.
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
NRS has written a layer of codes in Injustice, that allows them to patch specific stuff in the game without having to scratch the whole game structure.

In MK9 this is not possible, so fixing will possibly scratch something else. What we know for sure is, that there is a possibility that in MK10 we have the same layering codes that will allow easy patches, and hopefully better features that we don't agree with in Injustice.


So yeah, i'm hoping for MK10 patiently
 

Akromaniac27

Ready to lose your head?
I think they're going along the right track with Injustice in the sense that they can tweak the game accordingly. I just wish they would have the common knowledge of what's abusable while in production. They have the frame data at their disposal as well as knowing each character's tools and can test a few combos out; this is more than enough for them to see what's obnoxious and what isn't. Like Catwoman for example. Though in game frame data said otherwise at first, their programming clearly lets them know how much advantage 1f2 had from the start. +8 and her fastest normal is 6f which is what leads to 1f2? Um that's pretty basic to anyone how abusable that will become but they chose now to lessen it. Don't get me wrong I love the character, and every character needs their stuff, but the point I'm getting at is a lot of these "tweaks"could have been fixed long ago before release and they chose not t0. Or Hawkgirl's mace charge as another example. 22f startup(sure), but it only takes her 2-3 frames to fly away and then charge at you, all while being safe afterwards and safe enough to repeat it, can't duck it, while also doing big chip damage per hit, and we all now for these two characters, these moves are nowhere near the only things they can do.

Damage outputs as well. In a game where there is only 200% life total per match and you only have one shot at gaining 33% health back tops, characters capable of doing +50% for only a bar and/or trait in a game where you have 4 bars at your disposal and trait usage reloads very quickly and your free, unblockable, heat seeking interactables for +20%, is just dumb, especially when with majority of these characters, its not rocket science AT ALL to achieve this damage; obviously needing to utilize your entire meter to achieve that damage is a different story. Or MB specials that practically do combos such as Aquaman's trident rush as an example for nearly 30% is ridiculous and this information is available to them from the second they create these designs.

For a "balanced" game, I feel they should let the game flesh out first(hopefully after they fix the obvious first while still in production like examples listed above) and then get a sense of how the MU's are. Fighters should have a relatively large amount of 5-5's and then a relatively equal but small distribution between 4-6's and 6-4's. There should be little to no reason for a 7-3 MU(as in only one or 2 MU's TOTAL are just that) and absolutely no reason for 8-2's, I can't even describe how absurd those are. Once that's all figured out, then they can fix what needs to be fixed to establish an equal ground because in the end, no matter the tools, MU's are the biggest factor
 

Sultani

Warrior
Balancing mk9 is easy. But nrs didnt change the right things with prior patches because they didnt understand the root of the issues. At this point mk will likely see no balance changes. You get what you get.
 

SUPARNOVAX

Low tier? I was born in it, molded by it
If NRS had the budgeting allocation to keep pushing out patches yeah but I don't see them doing it since they're probably more busy and invested with refining Injustice at the moment.
 

james1926

Kombatant
I started playing MK at the arcades. I continued with MK2 at the arcades, and then, as I didn't had as much time as before, MK3 and MK4 on the PC. When the action changed to the consoles, I stopped playing.
The action, the thematic, the sound of the impact of the punches and kicks when connecting, the fatalities, the cool characters, the graphics, etc. are some of the things that made me like the game.
However, one of the greatest things about it was the matches against other people. In the arcades was special, because your opponent was there, just beside you. Pushes from some opponents, others that went into rage fits when they lose and turned off the machine with the switch under the cabinet, anticipation to the moves by looking and hearing the opponent movements on the stick and buttons, etc. Even though the first title was limited, people learned the ins and outs of each and every movement and where able to use them at the exact proper moments. I had and saw great matches.
When advancing through the series, it become apparent that some characters had a clear advantage over others, or some movements that could be abused. A great example was Mileena in MK2, who could spam her sai non stop.

So after a lot of years, I started playing MK again now that it became available for PC. It became apparent very fast that some characters had some disadvantages and some advantages. I also saw a lot of the matches at this year EVO. I was surprised to see that some things that a lot of players considered unfair or broken 2 decades ago, here was almost the norm, like spamming projectiles non stop. 90% kombos. I kind of understand why it doesn't have as big as a player scene as others like SF.
Do not misunderstand me, the level of the players was phenomenal, and top players played with the top characters, so any unfairness between them becomes kind of balanced (congratulations to the winner DJT by the way, great playing)

But something that really irks and that saddens me at the same time, is that at high level play, you only have less than half the characters to choose from, else you put yourself at a disadvantage. I would love to see a MK game where people can use their favorite character and have a fair match and be competitive. I would love to see someone winning a final with Sub-Zero, or Scorpion.

So, is it possible to make MK a balanced game? Or does it nature, with a lot of very particular and special characters makes that very difficult or almost impossible?
What does it take?
Of course it can be balanced. Not 100% (i.e not all matchups will be 5-5 obviously), but yeah it can be. All that is needed is NRS to make updates after some time of the release of a MK game has passed. In other words, if NRS could patch MK9 now, it could be balanced.
 

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
What does it take?
For NRS to make a 180 turn on their design policies. You do not have to be a game design major to realise that the game itself is pretty broken and stupid, which comes from having no good idea how to make a game good on a mechanic/fundamental level - simple as that.
- They need to set a strong base line of rules. (Trading blows/projectiles, proper combo and plinking system, could go on.)
- They need to stop thinking that making a game "easy to play" is a good thing.
- There is a vast need of overhauling the speed of the game itself.

Make jumping slower and more risky, make the game run at 60f/s, decide what kind of characters they want in their game (spacing, rushdown, grappler, etc.) and set them up with proper strengths and weaknesses, just to name a few things that they are doing very wrong as far as game design goes.

But hey. They make tons of cash. So they don't need to make GOOD games.
I mean, SF4 has had an immense life span while they dished out two games meanwhile. Or maybe three, not sure if MKvDC came out during, or before SF4.
Different design policy.
Different idea of "quality".