The case against variations in FGs (MKX/MK11)

[SaladPlateLover]

The recent post showcasing Rewind's master of storms Raiden was fun to watch. I am a fan of more fun

 

[Sablicious]

They were saying it’s better for the competitive scene. Everyone is using a base character variation opposed to their own variation.

Yeah... And we should all be saying how much 'fun' it is to circumvent one of the key selling points of the game, in order to homogenise the competitive scene.

 

[stokedAF]

Yeah... And we should all be saying how much 'fun' it is to circumvent one of the key selling points of the game, in order to homogenise the competitive scene.

Lol I’m not in the competitive scene or telling anyone what to do. I’m just saying what they said.

 

[Kroaken]

I liked variations. I like the promise of Kustom Variations. Injustice 2 did it all wrong.

 

[Juggs]

I’m all for discussion, but I think the better title or topic would be “why I believe variations shouldn’t be in future NRS/MK games”. Because you can’t possibly believe they would take out variations out of MK11 at this point.

If done right variations are awesome. It gives you more options to main the same character. I understand the logic of “just give one character everything”, but I’m pretty sure they thought about that. They probably realized it wouldn’t work balance wise. Sure, variations themselves are harder to balance technically speaking (turning 20 characters to balance for example into 60). But it’s not actually 60 characters you have to balance when you think about it. You just have to focus on balancing the specials aka the variations. The only true downside of variations imo is having to learn more MU’s (again, technically). Variations were the best part about MKX, glad they made a return. Hell, I’m very happy with just about every decision I’ve seen for MK11 so far.

Also, variations are a character loyalist dream. Which is a small plus but I love that certain players are loyal to their characters. I don’t fault a single pro who counterpicks, it’s the optimal play and is smart. But I also admire the players who do well but stick to a single character. To me, variations make it easier to do that.

 

[Sablicious]

Many of you misunderstand the concept of variations and why they were introduced in the first place. It wasnt supposed to be a different character nor it to be super viable in every single MU ,it was there to help you against some troubling MUs and thats it.

K'... But, in that case, there would be no need to limit the mechanic's use in M11K. You know, to ensure that they are present and accounted for to "help you against some troubling MUs"... Right?

Of course, running that claim through the 'Voight-Kampff Truthfinder 9,000', reveals that the gimmick was far more about its gimmickry and, by that very fact, the implications made about how 'diverse' and large the rosters was--as a direct result of the three variations per character. The "match-up" non-argument, too, is easily debunked -- simply by observing the pro scene and watching the likes of SonicFurry swap to Jason when in trouble, then back to Error Blargh again after Jason had cured him of whoever was ailing him (...as distinct from simply swapping variations of his 'favourite' character, in order to counter whatever happened to be countering his 50-50 caltrop spamatozoa).

Yeah... nah. I'll concede that perhaps the idea, or its "inception" was well-intentioned enough: introducing different versions of the same char., in order to mitigate match-up swapping during competitive tournaments (...a practice that, BTW, should be outlawed... 'cause it undermines the so-called "balance" of the roster... and 'cause it's mostly a trope synonymous with the more 'cookie-cutter' examples of fighting games -- the 'dial-a-combo' crowd -- than the SF's of the FG world... the implication being that, in the case of the former, if one has mastered one character, they've pretty much mastered the entire roster of 'klones'... but, I digress). However, for whatever reason -- Boon's crazed ex wife, "Maleena", entering the fray and collapsing the variation "dream" and ruining it for everyone... or something -- the system was ultimately borne out to be a gimmick in 2-cent hooker lipstick.

Hence, the preference should be for open use of the character's customisable special attacks in M11K; given it would help realise this "dream" of circumventing match-up issues -- pie in the sky that is much more within gobbling distance, were players are given carte blanche with customisation. Moreover, seeing as the abilities each have "slot requirements" attached to them (i.e., one ability requiring more or less "slots" to equip than another), why would "Boon variations" be needed? That is, what is the point of limiting the equipping of the specials if, beyond even that restriction, they must also be policed by the creators to ensure "balance"...??

The only explanation for thus could be that, without gestapo restrictions being placed on customisation, the game is M.U.G.E.N. tier in balance -OR- that Boon is losing sight of the broader fan base 'forest', due to his myopic focus on the competitive 'trees'...
---

Lol I’m not in the competitive scene or telling anyone what to do. I’m just saying what they said.

I was also just sayin'... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Lord Greyjoy]

Yeah the default variations are pretty pointless now that loadouts can be customized. They're set in their ways here for whatever reason.

 

[Vslayer]

I’m all for discussion, but I think the better title or topic would be “why I believe variations shouldn’t be in future NRS/MK games”. Because you can’t possibly believe they would take out variations out of MK11 at this point.

That's not what I meant by the title though, I'm not advocating for them to take them out of the game, I'm saying it's not a good idea for the game from what I've seen so far. But I get how it can be misleading.

 

[BecomingDeath13]

M11K

Will you please stop doing this? It looks like milk.

 

[Error404]

Variations were a good idea . Lots of them saw competetive play , and I'm sure more would have , if the game wasn't dropped prematurely.

 

[Vslayer]

Will you please stop doing this? It looks like milk.

As someone who's lactose intolerant, that looks like a really horrible death.

 

[Euph0nic]

Lots of conjecture here, but I'm not sure alot of high level players. Variations are tools, the more tools in a fighting game the better, given relative balance.
Glad master of storms raiden got brought up, hat trick kung lao...
these are extensions of already balanced content, with added flavor. I'm talking stunt on you blow you up severely with style.

Show me videos of you piling bodies with master of storms with aa full conversions and trappy gimmick mixes. It's fun as shit son. I'ts the pinnacle of casual play.

edit: s2 hish-qu-ten. what a masterpiece. Imagine if predator was variationless? Instead it was the height of mkx comp. Just broken enough

 

[Lt. Boxy Angelman]

As long as everything available is tournament legal and it doesn't end in stupidity as the game's life goes on - like getting rid of MKX's armored launchers but doing nothing to make sure Balanced Kenshi, Lackey Torr, and Jax overall weren't totally invalidated in the process - they can do whatever they want with variations and special slots.

Injustice 2 seperating casual and competitive and making all those gear pieces and special moves completely pointless other than aesthetically to anyone planning to go a tournament was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever seen a game make. Let's not have that again.

 

[Gooberking]

*snip*

Injustice 2 seperating casual and competitive and making all those gear pieces and special moves completely pointless other than aesthetically to anyone planning to go a tournament was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever seen a game make. Let's not have that again.

Wasn't just tourney players that missed out. I'm terrible, but I put in a lot of time and work, so I still wanted to play on a balanced foundation. I didn't really belong anywhere and was effectively orphaned as a player.

Maybe I'm an extreme edge case and don't count.

 

[Lt. Boxy Angelman]

Wasn't just tourney players that missed out. I'm terrible, but I put in a lot of time and work, so I still wanted to play on a balanced foundation. I didn't really belong anywhere and was effectively orphaned as a player.

Maybe I'm an extreme edge case and don't count.

Nah, I feel you. Orphaned is actually a real good way to put it.
I WANTED to grind, i just wanted to do it online. 90% of the time I spent in IJ1 was either online or in practice, so when you get the double punch of "so not only is almost EVERYTHING in this game worth having going to come from grinding the single player ladders and Multiverses, but if you're a competitive player, literally NOTHING you gain from the entire Gear System, all of its stats and bonus moves, and all those hours spent in the Legendary 'Verses, will mean a fucking thing outside of the aesthetic! Literally nothing! Have fun! "...yeah, I'm still bitter. I am absolutely head over heels for MK11, but my gods on high if IJ2 wasn't almost as big a ball drop as Marvel Infinite. But at least it made it to EVO.

You are not alone, fam.

 

[Eji1700]

Lots of conjecture here, but I'm not sure alot of high level players. Variations are tools, the more tools in a fighting game the better, given relative balance.
Glad master of storms raiden got brought up, hat trick kung lao...
these are extensions of already balanced content, with added flavor. I'm talking stunt on you blow you up severely with style.

Show me videos of you piling bodies with master of storms with aa full conversions and trappy gimmick mixes. It's fun as shit son. I'ts the pinnacle of casual play.

Well the trick really is relative balance. I think mk X did a pretty good job of getting variations to work given it's easy as hell to fuck up, but it's certainly a much larger task to try and make variations appealing but not super obvious.

The easiest, if maybe most boring, way is to make them matchup specific. Zoner? Pick your variation that's good vs zoners. Rushdown? Pick the variation with good tools to escape pressure. The issue being this sorta just winds up forcing the variation choice to the one that can actually win the matchup. If one variation is 5-5 and the other two are 3-7, well you're an idiot if you try and main one.

Alternatively you can try and make them REALLY special (master of storms) so it's a very unique way to play them pivoting on a very strong mechanic. The issue there being it's hard to make those not too good or too awful. Ice clone warps sub to the point of making it hard to justify anything else and spectral ermac, to my memory, never really shined in any way other than 'well that's neat'

Overall it's probably a hell of a lot easier to just balance the game without variations, but I do think it's doable (and hell mk x proves it), and certainly worth it. I hope that at the very least though we get a little more focus on buffing obviously useless characters and variations rather than just chasing around the better ones with nerfs.

 

[Vslayer]

As long as everything available is tournament legal and it doesn't end in stupidity as the game's life goes on - like getting rid of MKX's armored launchers but doing nothing to make sure Balanced Kenshi, Lackey Torr, and Jax overall weren't totally invalidated in the process - they can do whatever they want with variations and special slots.

Injustice 2 seperating casual and competitive and making all those gear pieces and special moves completely pointless other than aesthetically to anyone planning to go a tournament was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever seen a game make. Let's not have that again.

Good point, I get why gear couldn't have their benefits when playing ranked and maybe it was helpful for the players who grinded the multiverse but other than that it was useless. And not to mention when you played against a friend they didn't have any gear so you had to remove the gear's abilities. That part was not well thought of, but I did like the customization aspect of the game.

 

[Krankk]

I like the variations in MKX and I think I'll feel the same about the variations in MK11.

1. Variations are a great feature for casual players. They see a character like Triborg, who has 4 variations: One can turn into smoke, one shoots all kinds of fancy rockets, while the other guy drops grenades and the fourth guy shoots iceballs and slides and divekicks all over the place.
And while not all variations differ from each other to the same extent, there is still a lot to discover in each character.

2. I, as a beginner, also like the fact, that I can play characters I like, since the chance is high that they have a variation that is fairly easy to play compared to the others. Like Ninjutsu Scorpion or Slasher Jason. If the game had only one character with one variation, I would be screwed, if I liked that character, but he was super execution heavy.

3. Competitive players always try to min-max everything."Oh, so you're playing FPS games on the PC and you have a 10/10 mouse, but there is a new mouse coming out with more DPI? And it only costs 300 real life Bison dollars? Oh boi, better get that shit to keep your competitive advantage!"
I truly believe that if MKX didn't have variations the top 8s in every tournament wouldn't have been as diverse in terms of used characters as they were. You just have a greater variety, when it comes to countering opponents with your favorite character. You also have a higher chance at ending up with a useful character, since at least one variation can turn out to be really damn good.
And last but not least, there are always underused characters / variations, who come into a tournament and do really well and bring in a lot of hype. I never saw Fisticuffs Johnny Cage in MKX, but then I saw DJT (I think) bring him to a tournament and roflstomp his way up to the grand finals.

 

[Vslayer]

I like the variations in MKX and I think I'll feel the same about the variations in MK11.

1. Variations are a great feature for casual players. They see a character like Triborg, who has 4 variations: One can turn into smoke, one shoots all kinds of fancy rockets, while the other guy drops grenades and the fourth guy shoots iceballs and slides and divekicks all over the place.
And while not all variations differ from each other to the same extent, there is still a lot to discover in each character.

2. I, as a beginner, also like the fact, that I can play characters I like, since the chance is high that they have a variation that is fairly easy to play compared to the others. Like Ninjutsu Scorpion or Slasher Jason. If the game had only one character with one variation, I would be screwed, if I liked that character, but he was super execution heavy.

3. Competitive players always try to min-max everything."Oh, so you're playing FPS games on the PC and you have a 10/10 mouse, but there is a new mouse coming out with more DPI? And it only costs 300 real life Bison dollars? Oh boi, better get that shit to keep your competitive advantage!"
I truly believe that if MKX didn't have variations the top 8s in every tournament wouldn't have been as diverse in terms of used characters as they were. You just have a greater variety, when it comes to countering opponents with your favorite character. You also have a higher chance at ending up with a useful character, since at least one variation can turn out to be really damn good.
And last but not least, there are always underused characters / variations, who come into a tournament and do really well and being in a lot of hype. I never saw Fisticuffs Johnny Cage in MKX, but then I saw DJT (I think) bring him to a tournament and roflstomp his way up to the grand finals.

I agree those are all really good points actually. There are definitely pros and cons to everything and we can talk about all the good things about variations, but we also have to point out the things that were less desirable and could be changed in the future.

The thing that irks me the most about variations is feeling like you're left with an incomplete character no matter what you choose. The tools you enjoy about one variation isn't in the other one and no matter which one you choose, you won't ever have access to all the tools you feel you'll need. That's why I enjoyed picking up new characters in IJ2, you have the base moves and supers and you figure out your gameplan from there.

 

[Kroaken]

I agree those are all really good points actually. There are definitely pros and cons to everything and we can talk about all the good things about variations, but we also have to point out the things that were less desirable and could be changed in the future.

The thing that irks me the most about variations is feeling like you're left with an incomplete character no matter what you choose. The tools you enjoy about one variation isn't in the other one and no matter which one you choose, you won't ever have access to all the tools you feel you'll need. That's why I enjoyed picking up new characters in IJ2, you have the base moves and supers and you figure out your gameplan from there.

Ideally, that's solved with Kustom Variations.

 

[BookBurning]

I like variations to the extent that they allow a player to express their unique playstyle, or atleast have the potential to.

The PROBLEM is when one variation just so easily trumps another. I know that this is technically theory crafting because people have used variations that some thought were worse than others I'm sure. But the fact remains that variations are hard to balance because it creates a whole different tier list based off of just variations opposed to simply the character.

I'm all for removing them based on that alone. I gave up on MK10 fairly early because I got annoyed playing Mr. Mileena when I had a realization that there were too many armored moves in this game, so I might be a bit out of touch.

Edit: Also that's another thing, remove so many armored 50/50s. That shit is gross.

 

[colby4898]

In injustice I only had a few characters I enjoyed playing, with MKX I had loads because there is essentially 100 characters.

I don’t understand the ‘most of them are gimmicky’ argument. Even if only one variation of each character is viable that’s 30 viable characters for competitive players to use. Right there you have your standard roster size. Give this 30 their tier ranking or whatever, there’s the fighting game you want.

For those that aren’t competitive players, it’s brilliant because you can just have fun with the other 70 characters to choose from. I mained special forces Sonya. There’s arguably ‘no reason to ever pick that variation’... erm what about the fact she’s a lot of fun? Why use dualist when you can use dragons fire? Because I’m not in a tournament and he’s fun to use dammit! I don’t enjoy the other variations of these 2 characters. If Demolition and Dragons Fire was there only ‘variation, so just that’s what that character is, there’s 2 characters I’m now never gonna play. Boring.

So those who are all about competitive are basically guaranteed to get the roster they want just by picking the best variation of each character, and those who aren’t get the fun of playing all the other variations. It’s a win win in my book.

 

[Vslayer]

In injustice I only had a few characters I enjoyed playing, with MKX I had loads because there is essentially 100 characters.

I don’t understand the ‘most of them are gimmicky’ argument. Even if only one variation of each character is viable that’s 30 viable characters for competitive players to use. Right there you have your standard roster size. Give this 30 their tier ranking or whatever, there’s the fighting game you want.

For those that aren’t competitive players, it’s brilliant because you can just have fun with the other 70 characters to choose from. I mained special forces Sonya. There’s arguably ‘no reason to ever pick that variation’... erm what about the fact she’s a lot of fun? Why use dualist when you can use dragons fire? Because I’m not in a tournament and he’s fun to use dammit! I don’t enjoy the other variations of these 2 characters. If Demolition and Dragons Fire was there only ‘variation, so just that’s what that character is, there’s 2 characters I’m now never gonna play. Boring.

So those who are all about competitive are basically guaranteed to get the roster they want just by picking the best variation of each character, and those who aren’t get the fun of playing all the other variations. It’s a win win in my book.

It does give you more 'characters' to chose from, but it still locks you out of the moves and specials and essentially just gives you part of one character with each variation you chose - there's always a useful tool that's left behind. You never get a character's full potential, you just get parts of them at a time. Some variations could be eliminated to give another variation a better toolset altogether. Combine Brawler and Hollywood for Cassie and make Spec Ops a bit more distinct. You still have two very difference playstyles for one character and you don't feel cheated.

I'm not against variations as a concept, I just dislike the way it locks you out of certain moves or tools.

 

[Kroaken]

It does give you more 'characters' to chose from, but it still locks you out of the moves and specials and essentially just gives you part of one character with each variation you chose - there's always a useful tool that's left behind. You never get a character's full potential, you just get parts of them at a time. Some variations could be eliminated to give another variation a better toolset altogether. Combine Brawler and Hollywood for Cassie and make Spec Ops a bit more distinct. You still have two very difference playstyles for one character and you don't feel cheated.

I'm not against variations as a concept, I just dislike the way it locks you out of certain moves or tools.

Ideally, you have a full character variationless. And then variations tack on flavor and style.

 

[GLoRToR]

- The more variables there are in a system based on making variables competitively capable, the more likely that a few of them will overperform.

+ A game with perfect balance is called Chess and it doesn't sell.