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MKXL vs MK9 the best is relative

portent

Noob
The point that I'm getting at, is a lot of competitive players that want to devote most of their free time into a fighting game would rather be rewarded off pure reads and skill and do not like dealing with bullshit or ridiculous characters because it tampers with the hard work you put into a game. It doesn't matter how many hours you put into defending against a non react-able 50/50, the end result will always be comparable to a mere coin flip. It also doesn't matter how much time you put in against +10 launching or loop-able block pressure, the end result will always be you having to be stuck there and dealing with it.
This statement nails my sentiment exactly. I enjoy all 3 games, but there is a less satisfying feeling to winning in Injustice and MKX. Regardless of frames, +/-, advantage on block and whatnot, MK9 rewarded hard work. Kabal had all the tools you could want, but to master those tools took immense amounts of practice and dedication. What about Kenshi? How many players, outside @Pig Of The Hut can we mention who REALLY played Kenshi at a level that people considered him a problem? What's the common demoninator between Pig and @YOMI REO ? Dedication. They put in the time and the work and were rewarded for it. Injustice and MKX, in very lay terms, reward 50/50 guessing and setplay. You can practice all you want to master your characters and their toolset, but you're still gonna get blown up for guessing wrong on a coinflip, and the more characters that exist that have loopable pressure into 50/50 coinflips, the less skill it takes to win. It simply comes down to keeping the pressure on and being lucky that your opponent guesses wrong.



The game was balanced in the wrong direction, IMO. I really hope Injustice 2 or MK11 becomes a very rewarding and satisfying game to play at a high level and something like we've never played before.
I agree wholeheartedly. The way NRS balanced MKX was to make everyone "broken". This isn't Mahvel you know!
 

Matix218

Get over here!
Curious as to what's your reasoning on why Kabal was "really really broken" because I hear so many people say this and they weren't even in the competitive MK9 scene. Was it because his dash cancels were +1 and +2 on his viable normals? Or was it because his instant air zoning was a slower version than Cyborg from Injustice and in a game with better movement than Injustice?

Characters in MKX are Kabal on crack. There are characters who's run cancels are +11 / +12 etc. from normals that go half screen. Anything like that in MK9 would have been ludicrous. It doesn't matter if it cost a bit of stamina or one bar of meter, being anything close to +10 in a fighting game like MKX off some of your characters best footsie strings or 50/50 mix-ups is straight up ridiculous.

There are mainly two reasons Kabal was considered "broken".

1.) He didn't have any losing match-ups. Just 5-5s or advantage MUs
2.) He had armor you could cancel (to avoid it from being blocked and punished)

MKX has number 2.) in it with Tremor and his instant cancellable armor. And it may have 1.) as time goes on since not every character in MKX is fleshed out. I'm sure there will be that one character that will end up not losing to the cast and just having even or advantage match-ups just like it happened with both MK9 and Injustice.

I can't really defend Cyrax since having 90%+ combos off any touch was indeed pretty broken and it's a bit different situation from Kabal since Kabal didn't have specifically one overpowering or busted tool like that. Kabal just had every tool you could want in a character. Having a character with good offense, good armor, good zoning, and no losing match-ups is a bad recipe for any fighting game character.
Regarding Kabal in mk9, the biggest issue with him was that he was just too much of everything. Most characters in mk9 had their thing that they were good at, jax, cage, sonya all wanted to get in, kenshi wanted to zone and keep you out, cyrax was dumb with his damage, lao had amazing mobility. But kabal had literally everything. He had great pressure with his ndcs, he could close long distance gaps because he was essentially the only character with a "run mechanic", his iagb zoning was not only incredibly hard to deal with but it also built tons of meter so if you did manage to work your way in he most likely had a breaker ready to go. It was all of those tools and control of the whole screen as well add having the most meter that made him so crazy when compared to the rest of the cast. Yes, in mkx that same kabal would seem much less crazy but in mk9 compared to that cast he was on another level.
 

BillStickers

Do not touch me again.
Honestly all this talk about Kabal and none about Sonya is disgusting. She had better mid frame advantage than Kabal, it was just that no one realized how guaranteed it was at the time.

Also seriously this Cage crying is retarded -- he had hard counters like Freddy, Kenshi, Kabal, and Kitana. Sonya has better pressure by MILES and can deal with all of them much more easily.
 

STRYKIE

Are ya' ready for MK11 kids?!
I'd like to point out just for clarity's sake that you couldn't mechanically jail a high on someone in a ducking state in MK9. Didn't matter if you were +1, +9, +20 etc. at the time, it would not work.

The only way Kabal could jail you is if you blocked standing 2xxNDC standing, and there wasn't much incentive to do so.

Mind you though, it's food for thought that people want the 1 frame hard to blocks gone from MKX because they're too hard to deal with but nobody gave Kabal players any sympathy for having 1 frame at a time to pull off each rep of said block infinite :DOGE

Personally I maintain that MK9's biggest flaw was the lack of a fleshed out training mode. Did the game have other problems? Damn straight. But I think a huge amount of misinformation/misunderstandings would've been remedied by that alone, or at least a lot quicker. Imagine the shit Jax would be getting away with in MKX if we were given the same training mode resources as MK9... yeah...
 
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Prinz

watch?v=a8PEVV6tt14
Armageddon was the most balanced..
This statement will lead to the apocalypse.
+1 or +2 is not practically neutral in MK9. That situation can be brutal in MK9. There's no invincible backdash, weaker armor, punishable, less rewarding pokes. There's a lot of characters who get fucked up in those scenarios.

Let's also stop pretending you can just react to what Kabal is doing and counter accordingly. It's ridiculously fast. You can pick like, one thing to look out for, mostly you're just guessing.

This new retcon about the nice old days of Kabal with his my turn, your turn, he's just +1 pressure is ridiculous. Get out of here.

And don't come back telling me I don't understand how to play the game plz
I remember first time seeing the frame data in IGAU. +17 on block special move!? (Wonder Woman's whip toss) That's gonna be brroooke! But then IGAU movement and backdashes happened, lol. I wish MKX's backdashes were fully invincible, recovered instatntly or could be canceled into normals/directions. The game would be so much better.

Also, aeople need to chill out. Johnny was considered one of the best solely because of his f3 that was a mid, was 0 on block and had 1/3 of the advancing distance most of MKX's advancing normals have.
 

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
It doesn't matter how many hours you put into defending against a non react-able 50/50, the end result will always be comparable to a mere coin flip. It also doesn't matter how much time you put in against +10 launching or loop-able block pressure, the end result will always be you having to be stuck there and dealing with it.
:u

So instead of 1 Kabal we have 10 or more Kabal characters and instead of 1 Batgirl we have 15 or more Batgirl characters and this is why you have a lot of angry or salty tournament players that wish the game wasn't full of such bullshit and ridiculousness.
:u

The problem was always characters like Kabal and Batgirl existing, not the lack of the AMOUNT of Kabals and Batgirl to combat Kabal and Batgirl.
:u
 

Insuperable

My mom tells me I'm pretty
To everyone making points about Kabal:

Kabal was not upplayed. He was the best character in the game, without a doubt. Sonya, Kenshi, Cage, etc completely shut down a majority of the cast, but Kabal was the only character in the game that was able to compete with every single character in the game in every aspect. Granted, Kabal, Cyrax, Kenshi, Sonya, Cage, etc were much closer to each other than just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

With so many people practicing Kabal, the only great Kabals I have ever played in my 3 years in MK9 were detroitballn and REO. There were many good Kabals, but the differences were seen in gameplay, placements, and labwork. REO and detroit will forever be the only 2 great Kabal players, which provides arguments for Pig of the Hut and Kenshi. However, the main reason everyone considered Kabal broken, untierable, etc was because REO was on another planet in MK9, skill-wise. Detroit was as well, but REO was the main source for Kabal's notoriety.
 

Wetdoba

All too easy...
With MK9 and Injustice all the bullshit came from character specific stuff, none of it was just universal game mechanics (besides unblockable interactables) so those games could have been extremely good with just another balance patch each.

The neutral and everything made way more sense and required way more work which rewarded better play. With MKX its the universal game mechanics that create all the bullshit so you cant just patch it out without changing the entire game. The running and the risk reward for jumping and the plethora of advancing normals ruin the neutral entriely and to me, the neutral is what defines a fighting game the most. And like others said NRS basically made 50-50s and armor a universal mechainc in this game.

Instead of getting rid of the character specific BS from their other games they gave it to everyone for "balance" purposes. And while yes, the cast in MKX is fairly balanced overall, its for the wrong reasons. Two wrongs dont make a right NRS, dont force me to fight stupid with stupid, just get rid of the stupid for the next game please
 
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Wigy

There it is...
MK9 Outside kabal and cyrax was excellent.

I think MK9 was a far more skilful game.

MKX is great but it is half as footsie oriented and based half on luck on endless 50/50s and momentum is such a huge factor cause knockdown is death.
 

Matix218

Get over here!
With MK9 and Injustice all the bullshit came from character specific stuff, none of it was just universal game mechanics (besides unblockable interactables) so those games could have been extremely good with just another balance patch each. The neutral and everything made way more sense and required way more work which rewarded better play. With MKX its the universal game mechanics that create all the bullshit so you cant just patch it out without changing the entire game. The running and the risk reward for jumping ruins the neutral entriely and to me, the neutral is what defines a fighting game the most. And like others said NRS basically made 50-50s and armor a universal mechainc in this game. Instead of getting rid of the character specific BS from their other games they gave it to everyone for "balance" purposes. And while yes, the cast in MKX is fairly balanced overall, its for the wrong reasons. Two wrongs dont make a right NRS, dont force me to fight stupid with stupid, just get rid of the stupid for the next game please
While I do really enjoy mkx, I do kind of agree with you. It is like they went overboard giving every character ridiculous stuff so that they could create "balance" by having everyone be borderline broken. I do think that in general in tournaments, specifically ones that run first to 3, that even in mkx generally the better player does win (better neutral, better spacing, better knowledge) so im not saying that winning in mkx doesn't mean anything because I don't believe that either
 

Map the Soul

#nolivesmatter
Yeah, I never hit a high level in MK9, but it's what brought me into fighting games.
Does my point not still stand about Kabal being upplayed by people who didn't play the game? You gonna address the post?
My tournament placing for my sventy dollars, as posted on my Youtube channel with hundreds of thousands of views for fighting game content. Feel free to check my bracket with some of Toronto and the Northeast's best.

Thanks for the excuse to flex my ego.

show me your winnings, bruh.

Me, MonkeyBizness on the left. Seventy dollars for second place at GameOn #3. Where have you placed higher?


To the rest of the thread: Un-anti-airable without meter jump normals like Sonya's jump 1 spaced well, Kotal and Shinnok J1 spaced well, and Lao and Jin jump 2s spaced well, are sinful to me.
I abuse run just as well as anyone else, but I don't really feel good about doing it, eith er.
MK9 broken shit was fun back in the day, but certainly not good for a top level competitive game.
careful, i've had my fair share of accomplishments back in the day!
 

portent

Noob
While I do really enjoy mkx, I do kind of agree with you. It is like they went overboard giving every character ridiculous stuff so that they could create "balance" by having everyone be borderline broken. I do think that in general in tournaments, specifically ones that run first to 3, that even in mkx generally the better player does win (better neutral, better spacing, better knowledge) so im not saying that winning in mkx doesn't mean anything because I don't believe that either
I agree that the more skilled player will GENERALLY win, but I think that the reward for setplay and 50/50 coinflips definitely gives the lesser skilled player a better chance of winning if he is simply lucky enough to have his opponent guess wrong enough times.
 

JDM

Noob
+1 or +2 is not practically neutral in MK9. That situation can be brutal in MK9. There's no invincible backdash, weaker armor, punishable, less rewarding pokes. There's a lot of characters who get fucked up in those scenarios.

Let's also stop pretending you can just react to what Kabal is doing and counter accordingly. It's ridiculously fast. You can pick like, one thing to look out for, mostly you're just guessing.

This new retcon about the nice old days of Kabal with his my turn, your turn, he's just +1 pressure is ridiculous. Get out of here.

And don't come back telling me I don't understand how to play the game plz
Thank you. I can't believe we're actually downplaying Kabal now, cmon ppl we're better than this
 

BillStickers

Do not touch me again.
Yes let's all congratulate MKX for having frame data when 90% of it is wrong and dependent on how deep of a breath your character model is taking.
 

Jer

I'm a literal Sloth
Yes let's all congratulate MKX for having frame data when 90% of it is wrong and dependent on how deep of a breath your character model is taking.
Having in game frame data is really nothing and idk why people bother bringing that up as a point when comparing a game.
 

Matix218

Get over here!
Yes let's all congratulate MKX for having frame data when 90% of it is wrong and dependent on how deep of a breath your character model is taking.
Well most of it its right as far as I know. So that its a bit of an exaggeration but yeah, breathing hitboxes should not exist regardless
 

Israel

Noob
Was it because his dash cancels were +1 and +2 on his viable normals? Or was it because his instant air zoning was a slower version than Cyborg from Injustice and in a game with better movement than Injustice?


There are mainly two reasons Kabal was considered "broken".

1.) He didn't have any losing match-ups. Just 5-5s or advantage MUs
2.) He had armor you could cancel (to avoid it from being blocked and punished)


Kabal just had every tool you could want in a character. Having a character with good offense, good armor, good zoning, and no losing match-ups is a bad recipe for any fighting game character.
You explained yourself why Kabal was broken. 'Too good, Overpowered, Just a really really good character,' whatever else these other guys wanna call it. Tomato, tomato. He could also punish counter pokes with..... well, im not gonna dwell on the past. You played the character, you know hes broken. Now if your just trying to say that Mkxl also has his fair share of brokeness then i agree with that...
 

portent

Noob
You explained yourself why Kabal was broken. 'Too good, Overpowered, Just a really really good character,' whatever else these other guys wanna call it. Tomato, tomato. He could also punish counter pokes with..... well, im not gonna dwell on the past. You played the character, you know hes broken. Now if your just trying to say that Mkxl also has his fair share of brokeness then i agree with that...
I think that it's very unfair to say that Kabal was broken. I think the higher likelihood is that there simply aren't as many players who cracked the "elite" status of MK9 who understood the matchup on that level. Those players all say that Kabal was too good. He didn't, however, break the rules of the game. When he had a block infinite, he broke the rules of the game. When Cyrax had a command throw to unblockable bomb setup, he broke the rules of the game. That's the definition of broken. Too good, isn't broken. Broken is breaking the rules of the game.

This is broken, and it's not even as bad as the original ST version:
 

Israel

Noob
I think that it's very unfair to say that Kabal was broken. I think the higher likelihood is that there simply aren't as many players who cracked the "elite" status of MK9 who understood the matchup on that level. Those players all say that Kabal was too good. He didn't, however, break the rules of the game. When he had a block infinite, he broke the rules of the game. When Cyrax had a command throw to unblockable bomb setup, he broke the rules of the game. That's the definition of broken. Too good, isn't broken. Broken is breaking the rules of the game.

This is broken, and it's not even as bad as the original ST version:
So im not gonna dwell on the past, but just think of 3 or more tools kabal has and rate them.. either good, Too good or broken.

And if all your votes were rated 'too good', then overall as a character, it means he was broken.