(Discussion) Custom Variations and tournament play.

[fr stack]

Just on the argument about there bein too many abilities to contend with in tournament 12 specials with 3 choosable is ok i feel. I mean cyrax has 12 in his bombs alone in mkx i think itl be fine .

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

5. "Full customization might be a good thing for viewers but it will take away from the tournament players experience. I will argue full customization will not be good for viewers because they will be only seeing one version of each character." Explain

for the most part top players will be sticking to one variations. At majors/top 8's the viewers will really only see one variation of a charcter bc of this.

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

I think players who don't intend to attend any offline events should stop dropping their strong opinions here.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! agree. I do not mind their opinion bc it alludes to 95% of the people that will buy the game. I just wish they would realize there is a lot more to think about than "whats good for the viewer"

remember people want to see a train wreck. they want someone to lose their top 8 match bc they forgot a move was assigned. that leads to more entertainment for them on here and twitter. mob mentality.

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

If it's your 7th set of the day, chances are it's your opponent's 7th set of the day as well. So either you can both remember (and it's on you for forgetting), or you both can't remember. Either way the playing field is perfectly balanced.

I will do my best to be nice unlike you. This comment outs you as a casual who does not understand the tournament scene nor respect it. If your idea of balancing is both players not knowing what the other is using then you are one of the ones who just want a train wreck for viewers sake. You have clearly never been in a high pressure tournament situation let alone a qualifier top 8 placer match.

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

Didnt ed boon say in an interview they were leaning towards preset variations with 1 custom ability or none.

he did but nothing has every been confirmed. tyler actually said they are not ready to discuss it on one of the kast's

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

The only reason you'll have to memorize more it's because more characters will be viable with custom variations instead of just labbing the ones you fear to go up against in tournament. Custom variations actually add more depth and more longevity to the game unlike having to remember different inputs for no reason. I'm willing to put more time to learn every character match up if it means it makes the game better and more enjoyable and It'll actually be easier to balance a character with custom variations, like someone said in another post, NRS can make a character special move an ability if it's too strong and they can also buff or nerf each character normals / specials individually without fear damaging another variation. For the first time I think NRS would be able to balance a character without sending them to the shadow realm. No offense PTW but I think you're overreacting or maybe there is another reason you don't want custom variation.

I am not over reacting I just put up some talking points. It is my feeling full customization will be bad. You make very good points but they likely only apply to mid to casual level players. The top/best players will likely only stick to the strongest possible loadout. Like what baraka will not use gutting? Or what kabal will not use restand and air saw?

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

They can just flip a coin for the person who would choose first if either party feel like counter picking, for online tournament they can just make it so that you can see what you're picking but the other player can't when hidden selecting abilities.

Keep the questions coming Dave and Yes, I hope 16 Bit and Dizzy are reading this thread so that they know custom variations are possible and that it would make the game better as a whole.

16 and dizzy come from the tournament scene and every point i made, i promise, is something they would see value in discussing.

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

No. Because all OP moves you can find only in custom loadout - gutted, restand and air hook, misery blade etc.
Custom move also destroy cons from characters with pros and cons (for example - baraka, he desgined with good buttons, but without good combo and damage on midscreen. "Gutted" just destroy that originally designed cons and broke character)

paulo and 16 bit said one time in different venues "Every character is supposed to have a weakness."

there are some i used to train with that always said, "make every character broken that is the only way to balance a game."

maybe that is their approach this time? full customization will result in many characters without many flaws i am guessing.

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

What do you mean that's how it works now? That's not how it works at all. I am for customs, but this is my biggest concern to lean back to variations. When you play offline at your locals or tourneys, that first game is vital. Here is an example of what can happen at locals or tourney-

--If my Character X has 10 abilities, and I am playing a guy using Character Y who has 10 abilities, the first thing we'll do is try to equip one that is tough for the opponent. The problem is if I select Ability (1), and my opponent is like "oh if you're using that I am selecting ability (3)". But if he's gonna use ability (3) then I want to use ability (6). But then etc etc etc.

I'm not gonna be sitting there agreeing to fight against a setup if I can make my MU better before the game, and I wouldn't expect my opponent to either. So the only solution is a form of blind picks. Think about that though. You've went to this tournament, spent your money, to face someone that picks a character that you have no idea what they are about to use against you. Is that really how you'd want to play? I know I'm not trying to have that happen to me.

I mean online yea it works a bit different, but offline I'm having a difficult time seeing how it can be implemented without issues even if I prefer it.

ding ding ding! well said!

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

EDIT: What the fuck is the big secret anyway? This is shit you decide way before you get to an alpha build. At this point they already know which path they are going to go, so why haven't they said like 3 months ago.

Here's another thought, they probably aren't going to retroactively tell us what the variations are for the characters whose kombat kasts are already finished. So we might not know who has what tools up until release.

I think this is a great question and point. We will know soon enough I guess.

 

[STB Sgt Reed]

• Many people are saying that full customization will add to the depth of the game and longevity. This is not accurate. The very talented top players will quickly decipher the best selection and moves sets for a character. There are moves that are so strong that you will almost have to pick it (i.e. Skarlet Siphon or Baraka launching stab move). Allowing full customization will actually showcase less moves on the main tournament stages as top players will be using one, maybe two variations.

And, once again, how is that ANY DIFFERENT than MKX? lol

Literally only 1 or 2 variations were viable there as well. At least customs can let players who like to play certain characters the ability to make their favorite characters play in a style that suits them.


So, once again, everyone wants us to stick with whatever shitty combinations NRS comes up with for a variation? No fucking thanks. Don't need anymore shitty variations like unbreakable sub zero.

Want shoulder charge and air axe but they aren't in any preset variation? get fucked! ... that's a horrible stance. Shit was lame in injustice 2 and it'll be lame af here too.

 

[dribirut]

I can’t believe people are actually vouching against customizable variations.. like that’s literally what we have been asking for for the last 3 years.. Jesus people are never happy.

Were there some moves that were better than others? Of course.. but what does that matter? If we have preset variations, one will be better then the rest so what’s the difference? Also most importantly, out of the possibly more than 70 customizable load outs you could have between the 5 beta characters, not one single option had something broken or unbalanced..

Like what more do you guys want lol

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

I can’t believe people are actually vouching against customizable variations.. like that’s literally what we have been asking for for the last 3 years.. Jesus people are never happy.

Were there some moves that were better than others? Of course.. but what does that matter? If we have preset variations, one will be better then the rest so what’s the difference? Also most importantly, out of the possibly more than 70 customizable load outs you could have between the 5 beta characters, not one single option had something broken or unbalanced..

Like what more do you guys want lol

You make a good point but you are not considering all the factors here. I know you are a good player bc we played a lot. Consider character selection/counter picking. Im going to watch you pick a broken teleport then I will unselect jades air projectile for pole vault. you then realize the zoning wont be an issue so you unselect teleport. even if you do blind picks, after the first match it will turn into a ability counter pick shit show. Consider balance and a move like gutting. Consider that top players will likely end up on one loadout. I would argue in mkx almost every character had 2 tournament viable variations like shinnok with boner (lol) shaper and imposter. Imagine bone shaper with imposters teleport? all i had to do was give up bone shapers ground pound?!?

I do not have time to make all of my points but consider your point beyond just that one my man!

 

[IamBatface]

Which is a scary thought since we're 3 weeks away, so the kombat kasts were really up in the air as far as tournament play or even if you just wanted to play ranked online. We knew what the variations were this time before MKX release. If that's the actual reason I'm not going to be surprised if there is imbalance jank or the 3 pre-set variations are really vanilla and basic.


EDIT: What the fuck is the big secret anyway? This is shit you decide way before you get to an alpha build. At this point they already know which path they are going to go, so why haven't they said like 3 months ago.

Here's another thought, they probably aren't going to retroactively tell us what the variations are for the characters whose kombat kasts are already finished. So we might not know who has what tools up until release.

It’s a bigger decision to make this time, for MKX it was just decided which moves went into what variation but this time the moves they decide to leave out won’t be available in Ranked at all. They are going to want the coolest looking and best moves available in tournament but also want to keep as balanced a roster as they can. The line is much thinner this time around and there is a lot of potential backlash they may face for leaving certain moves out.

 

[Trini_Bwoi]

The beta has me worried precisely because some great moves were kustom variation only, meanwhile the preset variations ranged from uttershit to okay.

If we end up in a situation where we have to use neutered versions of each character competitively and some abilities never get to see the light of day it would be a travesty.

Balance the abilities if you have to. I would be on board with Misery Blade being a 3 slot move. I would not be on board with no Misery Blade. And if Misery Blade finds its way into a preset...then the balance argument becomes a moot point.

Also, I don't think anything kustom variations changes anything except the scope increases exponentially. You had to learn characters, then you had to learn 3 variations of each character, now you have to learn however many abilities for each character. Character counterpicking was a think, then variation counterpicking was a thing, now ability counterpicking is a thing. People chose the best characters, then people chose the best variations, now people will choose the best abilities.

 

[ChatterBox]

Here's the things I don't understand in this thread.

"How will my opponent and I possibly pick moves without spending 20 minutes on the character select screen counterpicking each other?"
The same way you do now at any tournament in any game. I mean honestly, why would anybody in mk9 intentionally lock in johnny cage before they saw their opponent lock in someone who wasn't Kenshi? That would be stupid. I don't see the difference. Also blind pick takes 5 seconds to setup, get out your phone, write in your character and 2-3 moves, then show each other at the same time. Or write it on paper, or tell a referee, or just some other person in the room. Which, again, is how blind pick has always worked, NRS was just nice enough to put it in their games, but no one else has.

"After every match someone will go equip different moves, the counterpicking will be unstoppable and slow down tournaments!"
How is that different from now? We saw tons of people in the INJ2 and MKX era pick 3 different characters every match. It takes like 30 seconds and usually doesn't work anyway. In inj2 tournament mode, if someone went to character select, the winner was locked into their character anyway. MK11 will at least have that, NRS doesn't take steps backwards from what I've seen. In sfiv and sfv people have changed the 1 variation of each character they have all the time and their scene didn't implode from the horrible weight of the character select screen.

"Pro players will just use the best variations so less of the character gets seen"
That wasn't true in MKX, plenty of characters had 2 or 3 variations that were played successfully in tournaments. I just looked at the character select screen, and it's almost every character. Even if it were true, how is that different from just having characters without variations, or just tiers in general? We saw just as many high tech and unbreakable players as we saw Joker in IGAU or Cheetah in INJ2, or Sheeva in MK9. This is impacted much more by balance than customs existing.

"How could they balance all these moves? Grouping them together makes balance easier"
Balance is impossible, it just is. NRS has balanced every game they made better each time, with less patching each time. Poor inj2 was by far the most balanced game, and our community liked it the least of the 4 NRS games to date, so be careful what you wish for anyway. Meanwhile, great grandpa MK9 is 'still just oh so fun, remember the glory days?' yea I also wish I was 8 years younger, but I still don't want to deal with drops-his-combo-does-60%-Cyrax or lol-6-4-Kabal ever again.

 

[Guizoca]

about the custom variation being allowed or not for ranked and tournaments. I'll try to explain why I think it should work around custom variations and why there's no point letting preset variations as reference for ranked or tournaments (I know they will be different from every builds we've seen so far).

In MK X, the variation system made its debut and it was a core part of the game. The simple idea of giving different playstyles to the same character. If you wanted to play a Subzero like MK9, the grandmaster variation would be the best one. If you wanted a command grab and new strings based on ice weapons, you could go to cryomancer (and no ice clone for balance purposes). That's the major difference that made variations make sense in MK X: the special moves were created to fit a playstyle that was planned before. "We want a Scorpion with some zoning options" and then the special moves for inferno variation are designed to suit this archetype. For MK X, the playstyle comes before the special moves.

That's why I see no point in presets variations in MK 11: it's pretty clear to me that the special moves were created independently from any idea of playstyle or archetype for any variation. The moves are just different. The only thing we can notice are some balance measures, like some skills taking two slots or even three. The only thing they thought was "this skill is too strong to take only one slot because that character would be unbalanced or you can choose to have more moves less powerful".

Since the special moves don't link to each other for a specific playstyle, having presets variations would be just arbitrary choices by the developers and based only on balancement (which is never fun). And since a perfect balanced game is not possible and there will always be a better move, people will piick the best variation anyway but having their freedom limited. For instance, if I played Scorpion, I'd instantly go for the misery blade variation.

I understand some arguments like

"would be chaotic playing against someone you don't know whiich moves they have" - well, the game could show which moves they chose or could be part of the gameplay being careful into figuring it out (I'd rather the first one).

"Some moves would never be chosen for being worse than the others" - maybe, but that's a thing for any competitive game. In dota 2 there heroes almost never picked and items almost never bought until the next patch. In Magic the gathering, some cards also make other ones look irrelevant. It's the same for a lot of MKX variations. You can't create so many variations and expect all of them being good (but, like I said before, as least variations in MK X were built around playstyles).

In the end, everyone will choose the same moves so it won't even be a chaotic metagame where anything goes (and if it does it will be fun and makes the game harder and deeper since you'll need to lab more).


I forgot to mention that some moves woul be left out and the only way to go around this would be having more than three variations, so it would be chaotic anyway

 

[SaltShaker]

I'm not quite following you, I think what you're saying it's you want to hidden select from the beginning to try to avoid getting countered in the first match. I believe you can still run into a bad MU when both player hidden select, if the other player doesn't hidden select then he clearly doesn't care. What I'm saying is that hidden select it's the same thing as asking your opponent before the match start or after they try to counter pick that you want to flip a coin or rock, paper, scissor. It's not different from hidden select and people do that all the time in current tournaments.

What? No, what I am saying is doing a rock/paper/scissors or a hidden select, is significantly worse than preset variations. I am going to CEO, to EVO, and various locals. If I am taking my time to do all of this, all the early game training, I want to lose based on my preparation, the player, and the match. Not because "my opponent had his abilities hidden until the loading screen before the match". That sounds insane. That is what I am saying. You shouldn't lose your first game by selecting the wrong abilities because you "guessed" your opponent would use certain ones. You need to know what someone is selecting against you.

Preset variations allows you to select more concrete, I see what I am up against, and we play our first game. It is very, very, very rare that two players sitting next to each other in tournament refuse to select a preset variation character and have to flip a coin or whatnot. However with customs, I can see this being a major issue for that first game because no one is going to willingly want to give up ground.

If there is a solid solution to this problem that keeps the integrity of the game in tact I'm all ears, I prefer customs. But I haven't heard one yet that applies to offline tourneys.

 

[SaltShaker]

@ForPeopleDoingCompetitivePlay

Again, I love customs, prefer it, but how is it feasible. We already know how different specials can make a MU. Take this scenario-

MKX is custom. Your opponent selects Quan Chi. There is a vast difference in how Sorcerer and Summoner play. Yet with custom, your opponent can select abilities to make builds like one or the other. Your character has some abilities strong against Sorcerer tools, and some strong against Summoner tools, but not both equally. You pick abilities strong against Sorcerer, your opponent picks Summoner. What do you do? Do you say "well I'll just not change my abilities and play a harder MU"? If you do change them, what's to stop your opponent from changing his, and then a back and forth? If it's hidden, are you really ok with not knowing if you're facing the Sorcerer Quan or the Summoner Quan until the pre-match loading screen? Now apply this logic to MK11.

This is what I want someone who will invest tournament time in the game while also supporting custom to answer.

 

[OnlineSkunk]

I think players who don't intend to attend any offline events should stop dropping their strong opinions here.

Bro, I'm just trying to help. It doesn't have to get personal lol, I haven't played a Mortal Kombat game since 2016. I'm passionate about Mortal Kombat, I've been playing them since I was kid and besides, I plan to go to NLBC to try to level up, pretty much a 15 mins drive for me. MK11 got me excited and I want to be vocal about it just like the rest of you can. I'm wishing the best for NRS, I want this game to outsell MKX, they deserve it. Top players like SonicFox, Scar, Foxy feel the same way as me, I agree with them and I think custom variations would make tournaments even more enjoyable, differentiate and more accurately represent a tournament player playstyle. That affects the viewer experience too, believe it or not watching top players fight it's something I enjoy a lot.

P.S. I believe it's going to be preset variations though, I did watch Ed Boon AngryJoe interview and I know he talked about variations. I'm just not losing hope because I know 20 days it's more than enough for NRS devs to implement everything I mentioned, with how hard they work.

 

[TurboTaco]

Precisely. The Irish scene is more or less dead and my two jobs are the priority so it'll be online for me, where I'll use my custom made variations thank'ee very much. I've no dog in that race, though the preset variations seems the only fair solution to me.

The scenes only dead if you let it be!

 

[freerf245]

Broken unbalanced autocarry loadout is much much better yeah. Press X to win mkx-style is much-much better yeah

There was not a loadout in the beta that made any characters remotely anything like an mkx character. If you believe that than you never played mkx.

 

[methademic]

I've said it a few times but realistically the only way customs would ever work in a tournament setting is if you could select the abilities you want quickly right at the character select screen. Otherwise we would be spending 2 or 3 minutes before the game setting some up, then you decide you want to swap to your surprise tertiary character so back to the menu to set that up real fast. Now your opponent has a counter to that pick that he didnt anticipate so he has to go set up a variation. Even before getting in to balance and gameplay it's just a logistical nightmare.

 

[Juggs]

Heavily in favor of customs. I would like an option, however, to pick moves in character select screen

 

[John Grizzly]

I'm not a tournament player, but if it's cool, I'd like to offer my two cents....

I don't want these awesome moves locked behind customization to never be seen in tournament play. It's such a waste. Everyone claiming that people will just counterpick depending on the moves, tell me how that's different from MKX, or any other fighting game.

If I pick Misery Blade and Demon Dash for my Scorpion, I would be locked in to that loadout until I lose. This is no different than the variation system in MKX. There could be a quick access menu built within the character select button layout menu with the moves and you simply check the ones off that you want. No one complains about players changing their button configs prior to a match, and I don't see how this would be any different/more time consuming.

As far as players not knowing what loadout their opponent has, would anyone be opposed to simply having a small bit of text that lists the custom moves you've chosen instead of the variation name? This could be something only seen in tournament mode. Instead of Boon's Main or whatever, we'd see "MISERY BLADE/DEMON DASH".