My Take On Character Loyalty in MK X

[trufenix]

Character loyalty will ALWAYS be a thing. Same as counter picking always will. MKX just allows for more ways to do both.

 

[Eddy Wang]

Character loyalty is an issue for casual players. Competitive players won't bother with it. They will pick and learn the strongest variations from the entire pool, for example Displacement from Raiden and Hellfire from Scorpion. I don't see competitive players wasting time in learning all 3 variations of a character just to "complete" the character. They will effectively treat each variation as a separate character.

Counterpicking whores who have pocket variations among the cast will not have the same experience than a person who constantly plays and have by far more knowledge in each one variations of his main.

In the end it will come down to who is used more to his characters tools and matchup knowledge rather than keep jumping from variation to variation to counter pick a matchup he/she doesn't like or because he/she wants to make top 8.

That is what NRS is striving to with MKX.

 

[truendymion]

I honestly don't give a shit about counterpicking. I just hope variations improve balance. NRS has a tendency to give some characters way too many tools, spreading them out between variations should balance things out.

 

[callMEcrazy]

16bit.

I'm talking about the vast majority. There will always be some exceptions here and there.

It really depends on how different each variation is. If they are quite different like it seems right now then learning all 3 won't be practical for a competitive player, unless of course all 3 are very good.

And what did 16bit do ? He played Kitana who is upper-mid tier.

 

[Vulcan Hades]

I honestly don't give a shit about counterpicking. I just hope variations improve balance. NRS has a tendency to give some characters way too many tools, spreading them out between variations should balance things out.

I think the most positive thing about variations is that it completely eliminates "super characters". The characters who had top 5 rushdown + top 5 zoning + top 5 damage + top 5 mobility + top 5 footsies no longer exist. Now you have to choose between dealing more damage, having more mobility/escape options or having really strong rushdown or zoning or footsies. You are picking one or two specializations.

I'm not sure if we can expect MKX to be super balanced, but I'm pretty sure there won't be any S++ tier character that completely stands out above the rest and makes every other character/variation look obsolete.

Of course depending on how the core system mechanics affect the meta, tierlists could look something like: S tier = rushdown variations, A tier = footsie variations, B tier = zoning variations, C tier = gimmicky variations.

 

[trufenix]

I think the most positive thing about variations is that it completely eliminates "super characters". The characters who had top 5 rushdown + top 5 zoning + top 5 damage + top 5 mobility + top 5 footsies no longer exist. Now you have to choose between dealing more damage, having more mobility/escape options or having really strong rushdown or zoning or footsies. You are picking one or two specializations.

I'm not sure if we can expect MKX to be super balanced, but I'm pretty sure there won't be any S++ tier character that completely stands out above the rest and makes every other character/variation look obsolete.

Of course depending on how the core system mechanics affect the meta, tierlists could look something like: S tier = rushdown variations, A tier = footsie variations, B tier = zoning variations, C tier = gimmicky variations.

I think you're giving it too much credit. Something is going to be broken, that's how vanilla fighting games work.

 

[aldazo]

I'm talking about the vast majority.

In that case I agree, there were more counterpickers than loyalists in MK9, but I'm counting with NRS pushing for character lock instead of variation lock as a tournament standard, in that case char loyalists will rise everywhere... a dream come true .

 

[VenomX-90]

You are right, it wont. If they can find the tools to the variations to beat the other character variations I think the character loyalty will be out of the window.

 

[ZigZag]

No it wont stop people from doing that, and that's not why it was created.
It's so that you can play one character with lots of different styles so that characters aren't stupidly complicated and so the designers could do lots with one character.
Also there's still a small amount of choice so if you like say sub zero but want more tools to use defensively rather than playing rush down you have that option.

I love variations and no they wont stop people picking up a new main if they don't think any variation is good enough but in any case people can stay Waaaaay more loyal to a character if they enjoy all 3 variations as they differ enough to deal with different types of characters.

Let's face it though we will want to play all of the Kast especially the new characters! So people will still have alts and be in crisis about who to play.

You can potentially play a couple variations or main just one of them but still use other characters to deal with certain matchups, it's just opening up possibilities and it opens the gate to fighting games taking an approach that is player friendly, if you're like me you'll play a character purely because you loved his or her design, so if I happened to not be able to play that character well or did not like their play style I may have picked up another character, however now I can pick someone I think is insanely cool to represent and find a variation I love on him or her, still this does not mean that there's a variation for everyone, it's likely that because the variations don't change a character entirely but only in certain ways that you may just not like character in general.

 

[callMEcrazy]

In that case I agree, there were more counterpickers than loyalists in MK9, but I'm counting with NRS pushing for character lock instead of variation lock as a tournament standard, in that case char loyalists will rise everywhere... a dream come true .

Don't you think that locking characters is a way of artificially forcing character loyalty ? However bad counterpicking is perceived to be, it's a performance-based approach. Loyalty is not.

In any case it doesn't affect me. I'm nowhere near competitive. I mained (and still do) Sektor in Mk9 because I really liked his playing style. If he is anything similar in Mkx I might pick him up again. Am I a loyalist then ?

 

[aldazo]

Don't you think that locking characters is a way of artificially forcing character loyalty ?

Yes, I do....

 

[PaletteSwap]

To put it as simply as possible, variations are for the fan that always loved Sub-Zero's freezy powers and story, but hates playing defensively.

Now, we can actually main the characters we connect with in story mode, or the character we picked when we were 8 years old with the likelyhood that they will have a suitable style.