I know Smash isn't a fighter, but look at Melee:I agree.
NRS's character labels (i.e., "premier zoning character") make no sense, which is one of the reasons why I now support customizable variations, and I used to be a hardcore advocate for tournament variations. I think we as players should be in charge of how we decide we want to play a character, not NRS. Besides, some of these preset variations are comically bad. They have no cohesion whatsoever. Just a bunch of random moves mashed together.
Except the other guy is wrong. If you don't use the appropiate combo and do a move that is 2 years on whiff of course you can get punished. If you adapt the combos you will always be at advantage when the opponent breakaways.The fact that two players can say the exact opposite things tells me that NRS did something right with the air escapes.
I've said this same thing so many times in various threads.I feel like the top of the game (Erron/Gearas/whatever) are actually finished and then maybe a little too good. Their movelists make sense and they have a couple of viable ways to play the game.
It feels like everyone else just isn't. Even other contenders for at least decent, like noob, look fucking dumb when you consider that supposedly BOTH varaitions are supposed to be playable.
The meta looks ok if you don't break out variations, but if you made each one a separate character its a dumpster fire. The core game is there, but I hope they have a hell of a lot of polish planned in patches because it doesn't feel done.
The better characters in the game have good mid strings, though. You don't have to look too far up the tier list to see them. Characters like Baraka, Kabal, and Liu Kang have safe and hit-confirmable mid strings. The characters who don't such as Kano, Kotal Kahn, and D'Vorah are the ones people are placing low on their tier lists.Strings being minus doesn't matter as much in this game because a lot of characters don't have incredibly good mid strings.
I agree with many of your points.This is, competitively, the best Mortal Kombat ever made. The flow of the gameplay is great, with a good balance between going ham and being patient. Lots of walking and waiting/being patient followed my moments of intense action.
Right now there are only two things I would change:
1) Having no resource management around Fatal Blows is a bit silly. This thing that you get for free, that does a pile of unbreakable damage and can help some people achieve near-40% unbreakable combos, but you don’t have to save any meter to use, and if you whiff it, you just get it again. Some of them hit at footsie range or beyond. Imo the current state of the fatal blow goes again much of what the meta stands for, which is think, wait your turn, consider the tradeoffs of everything, earn your damage.
2) I like the idea of krushing blows — and most of them are fine. But I think that several of them should be tuned to reward knowledge rather than sheer luck. For example, Sonya doing a third of your lifebar if you make a read on her ring and block/jump the the first one but are hit by the second doesn’t seem to reward any sort of skill. Nor making a wrong read a couple times on Erron diving in with his mixup from half screen. Other than that though, it’s a neat mechanic and I appreciate the ones that you have to work for. D2 is neat since everyone has access to it.
Aside from this, this game is exposing:
1) The people who’ve been spoiled by overtuned zoning. You mean you might have to think when you toss out a projectile, rather than mindlessly tossing things out and meter burning them for mixups on block? You might have to actually play footsies while you zone, like Street Fighter? Shame.. Welcome back to thinking again in MK11
2) People who are used to having shortcuts around dealing with neutral.
3) People who jump to conclusions before they’re fully playing the game. If you really want to make assumptions about the cast right now, you should be flawless blocking everything that can be flawless blocked. If you’re sitting there taking pressure from characters with sizable gaps and doing nothing about it because you’re dependent on being able to mash armor like it previous games, it’s time to hit the lab.
We still need some time at this point to flesh out the meta and truly play characters and MUs optimally. It’s fine to have a gut feeling that says a character is weak or too strong, but saying you know exactly how to rebalace the cast in Week 2 is silly, and there are several players who I’d think would have enough experience and maturity to know better.
The plus strings are definitely few and far between. But there are a fair amount of 50/50s and mixups leading to smaller damage (or even bigger for some characters) in MK11 -- enough to make the mixup/risky players happy, I'd think.I agree with many of your points.
But of course no Crimson Shadow post would be complete without sucking up to NRS and taking a cheap shot at zoning and its players. LOL.
How about offensive-minded players who want 50/50 mix ups and plus strings? They always seem to be excluded from your rants.
No person in this thread has done any re-balancing or suggested any buffs or nerfs. People are simply discussing what they like and dislike about the game.
Yeah i tried to make it work but his f2 mid is super negative on every hit and his 21212 string is three hits high to start lolMy biggest complaint is that Lao is unsafe as hell on everything, has no overhead and honestly makes me wanna switch to a top tier and stop caring about all this
Absolutely should be zero full screen fatal blows. When I play Erron the amount of harassment and foolishness I can get away with because I have a ten frame full screen unbreakable launcher is wild. If you look at me the wrong way you getting blasted. I also hate it versus those two as well because it makes you have to play super gimped and overly cautious and these characters all have strong ways of chipping you out and close out rounds WITHOUT adding the full screen Krushing Blows to the mix.I honestly love the current meta but I would love custom variations to be the way to go.
Other than that I like the pacing of the matches, the mechanics are gold IMO (except some fatal blows... (Erron, Cetrion, Kabal, etc...))
If you could tech with just the throw button, there would be no reason to also significantly reduce the damage.Grab, grab, grab, grab.
They do 14%!!! 50/50 so even if you read a grab and you guess the wrong way you lose. And it sets you up for a 30% grab?!
Make grabs do like 10% and not a 50/50 and maybe we’ll see other moves in this fucking game.
I still think 14% is a lot. 3 grabs in 1 round and thats 42%... I think 10-12% is enough. No other MK9, X, Inj 1 or 2 didn’t have throws do that much. Nobody complained about them being weak.I definitely agree with the sentiment about fatal blows. I think you should have to also burn two bars of meter and them not regenerate on block or whiff. They'd still be a great tool for potential comebacks especially if you land a combo and confirm into them, it would make them more hype on hit instead of just kind of annoying.
Absolutely should be zero full screen fatal blows. When I play Erron the amount of harassment and foolishness I can get away with because I have a ten frame full screen unbreakable launcher is wild. If you look at me the wrong way you getting blasted. I also hate it versus those two as well because it makes you have to play super gimped and overly cautious and these characters all have strong ways of chipping you out and close out rounds WITHOUT adding the full screen Krushing Blows to the mix.
If you could tech with just the throw button, there would be no reason to also significantly reduce the damage.
I think one or the other is reasonable and proper. Both? That's a bit too much. Throws should be applicable. I think I'd just prefer the 50/50 aspect gone of the two choices though, that's really what the problem is, not the damage.
Without the 50/50 aspect, you're not going to be eating them like you are now though is the thing. There's less crazy combos in this game in comparison to the other games too so it's not the same deal.I still think 14% is a lot. 3 grabs in 1 round and thats 42%... I think 10-12% is enough. No other MK9, X, Inj 1 or 2 didn’t have throws do that much. Nobody complained about them being weak.
That’s true, but throws are still hard to react to. You won’t get hit by 5 per round like we are now, but they will still be strong with lack of mix ups. 14% is high.Without the 50/50 aspect, you're not going to be eating them like you are now though is the thing. There's less crazy combos in this game in comparison to the other games too so it's not the same deal.
They wouldn't be weak at 12%, but the 50/50 removal would be a significant nerf alone.
I think all fatal blows are unsafe on block. If you crouch Erron Black's fatal blow, he cannot block for half a second. All forward advancing special moves can punish. From my limited testing, a couple can even punish anywhere on the screen such as Kabal's nomad dash, Noob's tele-slam, and Scorpion's teleport. Kabal's and Noob's punishing is a lot more difficult to execute than Scorpion's, though.I seriously think all characters should only get fatal blow ONCE per game. If you waste it you will never get it again. That thing is safe on block for almost everyone and spammable as f***
Edit: and why is Erron's fatal blow a fullscreen 2f projectile-based???
Let me re-phrase, I wish the combos were the same length as MK9 / MKX. I’m simply saying that if they kept the damage output at its current rate but with the combo length of the old games, you would kill someone in one combos. I would rather see longer combos working for damage than 2 buttons - Amp Special - 2 buttons - Ender doing 35 -40 percent.God no, that’s one of the reasons I hate MvC and most other team fighters, the damage is so damn gimped compared to the scale of your actual combos that it feels unsatisfying most of the time