I think I can see Crimson's point slightly, but to me there a couple problems with the theory.
For one, and I certainly don't mean to insult Injustice or its players, Superman, Aquaman, Black Adam and maybe one to two others had a very simplistic and easy way to play the game, which was to hold back or walk forward and walk into a range where they had very long reaching mids or lows that often lead to a positive frame scenario or an extremely disadvantageous one for the player defending. And not only that, that was extremely evident from day -3 when people had the game early. Not only that, those characters were some of the very few who were actually fast on their feet in a game of extremely slow characters.
Now, the problem was that I think watching the game it would be easy to see characters sitting on downback about two character lengths way from each other and see "Oh look, they are patiently awaiting their opportunity to attack = they are playing a highly mindgame fueled footsie game", which I can understand. However, as a player, and I've played against some of the very best to play the game, that was not the case against the top tier characters. "Waiting" at midscreen was often the only course of action one could take against someone like early Superman because he so easily dominated that midscreen range, and he did it with one string that lead to a huge reward on hit and a mixup scenario on block. This was the same case for the other top tier characters at the time. 16 Bit is often fond of saying that playing Injustice made him feel like he was a bad player because he so often had to blindly dash or jump in and hope that his attack would hit, and especially in the early days of the game, this was probably the case for most of the cast.
Mortal Kombat X, as far as I've noticed, has a little more nuance in the midrange game due to an increased mobility across the whole cast and the return of throws that are truly strong at forcing an opponent off of block, amongst other things. Now, much like Injustice, many characters' normals that are often used for mixups are also some of their longest ranged, which can make it a bit annoying to defend against. Add to that, most characters get a really high reward for their attacks landing, so defensive play that involves poking with fireballs is a little more difficult than it could be in Injustice where characters did not move very well and could be pinned down a lot easier.
Is the strength between highly offensive and highly defensive invariably too skewed? Perhaps; it's far too early for me to commentate, but I will say that to me it's kind of like the opposite of IGAU, where holding back and making people walk into your offense was king. One thing I think people will eventually realize is that outside of jumpkicks (sometimes), a lot of jumpins have a difficult time connecting on crouching opponents unless done very late, which opens them up to AA a lot of the time. Much like in MK9, this is something people will probably get very good at stopping.
The problem I have with the argument Crimson brings up is to me it's unfair to expect a game that is very new to show a lot of nuance in the gameplay; people are playing for a lot of money and will play cheap to win, which often means avoiding that sort of nuanced game. While that may be an unfortunate thing to watch, it is a part of every game at the beginning of its life. In Injustice, the top guys did not dominate by jumping all over the place but by walking back and playing a dominating ground game, which probably gave it the allusion of a nuanced mid range game when it was actually anything but.
Just IMO, I actually really like the game currently, flaws and all. I didn't mind Injustice at all, but I felt there was a lot that would have been improved if characters had mobility options besides dash and jump and the top tiers weren't as overly dominating. MKX has solved one half of that equation, and while there are probably one or three that stand above the pack, there is a large list of characters whose game is extremely oppressive once it gets going, which is what you want in a strong character IMO. You can not avoid characters having flaws, you can not avoid bad matchups, but you can make the character be extremely good at what they do and make it difficult to avoid it if they get going, which I think MKX has done very well so far. At release, it's probably the best NRS effort yet, as they have seemingly avoided their usual pitfalls. Bravo to you for that, NRS.
(PS: the online stinks lol. Woops)
