Are we one step closer to getting custom variations for competitive play?

[Zoidberg747]

I wrote this solution in another, older thread:

They design a universal Tournament Mode.

It has a 20-25 second time limit to select the below options:

1. Character and color (no new outfits)
2. 1-3 custom variation moves
3. Button configuration/button test
4. Stage select is locked on random select (no player advantage)
5. Game can't be paused until after the victor is announced (no more of that excitement-killing pause & rematch nonsense)

Every move in the game has its own unique symbol/emblem and they are displayed at the versus screen and are visible underneath the respective character's stamina bar.

Tournament organizers just have to turn on tournament mode and they're good to go.

Every move in the game can already be used in the lab.

Here's an example of Marvel:

While I like this solution, the question is whether NRS will actually do it. The UI to do it right now is too clunky, but something like the marvel system would be pretty good.

Button checks happen regardless, custom moves won't change any of that. So that's just a strawman argument.

Regarding how long selections will take, I'll just point to the same evidence that's been discussed ad nauseum: MvC. Players had to make more selections (multiple characters and assists) than MK11 custom moves would require, and nobody freaked out over how long that took.

It's not really a strawman because i'm not making a straight comparison. The point is that NRS made an easy way for people to check and set buttons and yet they still take a bunch of time to do so. Why exactly would custom variations be any different. Not to mention that there is really no strategy involved in button checks but there absolutely would be in custom variations. What's to stop people from taking a minute to contemplate what their opponent is going to do and building a custom variation around that?

Marvel is also not a fair comparison as the UI is right now. In Marvel you have the assists in a sidescrolling list that you can find easily after choosing your character. If MK11 had 3 of those lists with custom moves that you choose I think it'd work much better, but we aren't there yet.

 

[Xelz]

While I like this solution, the question is whether NRS will actually do it. The UI to do it right now is too clunky, but something like the marvel system would be pretty good.



It's not really a strawman because i'm not making a straight comparison. The point is that NRS made an easy way for people to check and set buttons and yet they still take a bunch of time to do so. Why exactly would custom variations be any different. Not to mention that there is really no strategy involved in button checks but there absolutely would be in custom variations. What's to stop people from taking a minute to contemplate what their opponent is going to do and building a custom variation around that?

Marvel is also not a fair comparison as the UI is right now. In Marvel you have the assists in a sidescrolling list that you can find easily after choosing your character. If MK11 had 3 of those lists with custom moves that you choose I think it'd work much better, but we aren't there yet.

NRS already stated that creating a UI for this wouldn't be a problem. Since then everyone has been assuming an efficient UI would be available if/when custom moves become tournament legal. I think we're all in agreement that the current UI wouldn't be tenable in a tournament setting.

 

[trufenix]

customs are already in the game, just play one of the 20 other modes they're usable in.

 

[trufenix]

in a month, you'll be saying this was them advertising customs are coming, in 6 you'll be saying they trolled us. Mark my words.

 

[JSF]

Injustice 2 was pretty well balanced for a game in its release patch, and MK11 seems better in that regard. I'm not sure what perfectly balanced games you are comparing them too because NRS seems on par or superior to other companies when it comes to game balance in the past couple years.

when a mind is this closed and made up i refuse to argue. good day and blessings to you sir

 

[KutlessMyth]

View attachment 14978

NRS is clearly listening. We can now see the variations moves on the loading screen. This was one of the suggestions given by the community, and now it’s here in today’s patch.

So... What do you guys think? Any chance we’ll be seeing variation-building via the character select screen, any time soon? It’s just a quick selection of moves.

Post-beta, pre-release, it seemed the overwhelming majority was in favor of customs. Now it seems like everyone gave up and just settled for tournament variations.

But not me! I won’t give in so easily

This game was built for custom variations. I hope they don’t wuss out like they did with Injustice 2.

I hope they dont, they can barely keep the tournament variations balanced while adding new characters, adding more will buttf*** everything

 

[DDustiNN]

Marvel is also not a fair comparison as the UI is right now. In Marvel you have the assists in a sidescrolling list that you can find easily after choosing your character. If MK11 had 3 of those lists with custom moves that you choose I think it'd work much better, but we aren't there yet.

I think that’s the entire point we’re trying to make here. You seem to be operating under the impression that customs would be allowed as-is, forcing players to create presets ahead of time. That will never be the case, and we all know that. We are advocating for a character select screen UI update to include this feature, just like MvC has. Problem solved.

 

[Marinjuana]

when a mind is this closed and made up i refuse to argue. good day and blessings to you sir

I mean it didn't really seem like you wanted a discussion and were just saying your opinion, so I approached it with the idea that I just wanted to put my counter opinion out there that I think NRS does a really good job with balance. You too, have a good one

 

[DDustiNN]

customs are already in the game, just play one of the 20 other modes they're usable in.

That’s exactly what I do. For the first time, I have not even touched rank.

NOT ONCE.

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

Here's a way I like to think about it: "will any character, in a vacuum, become strictly worse with fully unlocked variations?" That seems pretty impossible, at worse they can continue to use their existing proven tournament variations. What we do have is the potential for a lot of characters to become better. The S/A/B tiers are expanded and reshuffled. Isn't that what a lot of fighting game fans want when they complain about wanting buffs? Absolute worst case, a truly abusive combination emerges -- that will become obvious quickly and balance changes will be necessary. However, the fact that many abilities are incompatible with others leads me to believe that NRS has already addressed many of the most obvious problems internally.

 

[RexAeterna]

However, the fact that many abilities are incompatible with others leads me to believe that NRS has already addressed many of the most obvious problems internally.

Exactly. They already made the point system for choosing abilities, plus making them "conflict with" others that presumably make them overpowered. Plus we have damage and gravity scaling for combos, reasonably balanced base characters / normals, moves that pop-up generally cost a bar, etc. So I'd really like to see some concrete examples from the naysayers about what crazy unbalanced things could happen if we had custom variations.

Also this thread made me really disappointed that now the Kombat League doesn't have customs .

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Exactly. They already made the point system for choosing abilities, plus making them "conflict with" others that presumably make them overpowered. Plus we have damage and gravity scaling for combos, reasonably balanced base characters / normals, moves that pop-up generally cost a bar, etc. So I'd really like to see some concrete examples from the naysayers about what crazy unbalanced things could happen if we had custom variations.

Also this thread made me really disappointed that now the Kombat League doesn't have customs .

Guaranteed when we got our hands on it for competitive play we’d be hearing about how certain conflicts don’t make any sense, and what was NRS thinking when they made this move conflict with this other move, it must have been rushed, etc.

It’s like people don’t look at how people actually react to things, and just always assume the ideal case before it ultimately hits the fan.

 

[trufenix]

Just a quick reminder, literally no one is stopping you from running that perfectly balanced and reasonable customs tournament online this weekend or on the side at the next major.

I know we're all waiting for nrs to take a stab at it so we can say haha punk'd we knew this wouldn't work, but seriously, if you want to prove to NRS they need to burn man hours doing a complete design 180, maybe put your money where your fucking mouth is.

 

[Ayx]

Exactly. They already made the point system for choosing abilities, plus making them "conflict with" others that presumably make them overpowered. Plus we have damage and gravity scaling for combos, reasonably balanced base characters / normals, moves that pop-up generally cost a bar, etc. So I'd really like to see some concrete examples from the naysayers about what crazy unbalanced things could happen if we had custom variations.

Also this thread made me really disappointed that now the Kombat League doesn't have customs .

People are complaining endlessly how NRS "rushed" komp variations on making them borderline useless, but you expect them to have some sort of deep thought process on how the point system is? If they had some in detail kombat kast explanation of all this, maybe. But for example: Raiden has a 2 pt. teleport while Skarlet AND Cetrion.. two powerful zoning characters have 1 pt. teleports. Why? Look at the clips on twitter on how Sonya and Jacqui custom variations are cracking 50%+ on combos forcing breakaways that they already thrive on w/o those kustom sets.

It also allows in a tournament setting (Remember we are talking FT2... maybe FT3 if you get far enough) a chance for people to adapt to a character playstyle and even now in this meta counter picking is rampant. People can barely get by 1 game w/o someone whipping out a pocket Reborn Scorpion or an IW Geras. If you multiply that by the amount of kustom settings you can choose per character.. basically it will become a game of "how to outgimmick your opponent w/ KNOWLEDGE in 6 rounds or less." people are barely getting used to how to counter the strings and gaps in flawless blocks, how to adapt to tick throw setups.. online setup nonsense etc. The game is very deep as it is. Do you really want this much randomness on a kompetitive setting? Just stick to casual FT10s with your friends on on kasual matchups if you want to play kustom. All you need is one Sonya player to bust a 50%+ 2 bar combo online on you to say "ok I understand.".

 

[DDustiNN]

Guaranteed when we got our hands on it for competitive play we’d be hearing about how certain conflicts don’t make any sense, and what was NRS thinking when they made this move conflict with this other move, it must have been rushed, etc.

Didn’t people already do all of the above with the tournament variations?

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Didn’t people already do all of the above with the tournament variations?

Yup — I’d expect to see that except worse. I’m already counting down to when the endless complaining begins after a short honeymoon phase.

 

[DDustiNN]

Yup — I’d expect to see that except worse. I’m already counting down to when the endless complaining begins after a short honeymoon phase.

I’m looking forward to it. Everyone seemed to love customs in the beta. The complaining only started once NRS’s band-aid fix was revealed (in the form of tournament variations).

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I’m looking forward to it. Everyone seemed to love customs in the beta. The complaining only started once NRS’s band-aid fix was revealed (in the form of tournament variations).

No one was very worried about balance in a beta. Now that tournaments are on the line, like every other aspect of the game, you’ll see complaints raining fast and furious once people realize that it doesn’t work out as perfectly as they’d imagined it’d be.

 

[DDustiNN]

No one was very worried about balance in a beta. Now that tournaments are on the line, like every other aspect of the game, you’ll see complaints raining fast and furious once people realize that it doesn’t work out as perfectly as they’d imagined it’d be.

That’s okay too. People will always complain about video games, no matter what. Always.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

That’s okay too. People will always complain about video games, no matter what. Always.

Tournament integrity is a big deal. So the point is, you don’t want to risk the tournament integrity just to satisfy complainers that will likely just start complaining again anyway.

That’s why it’s such a heavy consideration.

 

[xInfra Deadx]

Yeah, uh, no. Not happening anytime soon.

 

[Xelz]

Tournament integrity is a big deal. So the point is, you don’t want to risk the tournament integrity just to satisfy complainers that will likely just start complaining again anyway.

That’s why it’s such a heavy consideration.

When tournament players like SonicFox and Honeybee as well as commentators such as K&M are clamoring for tournament custom variations, it kind of undermines the integrity concerns. But whatever. If NRS doesn’t feel they're able to balance it, then fine. At this point we’re arguing a question of NRS' competence.

Let’s acknowledge two things: a) perfect balance is never achievable, and b) there will always be some fraction of players who complain/don’t get what they want. That’s the reality of a fighting game. So the question is what constitutes “good enough” balance, and what will make the most number of players happy?

MvC3 had far from perfect balance and yet was a beloved game that had a very successful tournament life. So we know what the balance bar is for a game to have tournament cred. Are we saying that NRS can’t hit that bar with custom moves, which arguably provide even fewer choices than MvC3?

And regarding the number of players who will complain, most polls show 60%+ of the player base wants custom moves in tournament and/or ranked, including some of the top players. Are we saying that more than 60% will be upset if custom moves are allowed? How does that math even work unless NRS completely breaks the game?

None of those arguments make sense unless you assume NRS is really so incompetent compared to Capcom or Arc when it comes to game balance that they can’t allow as much player choice as MvC or DBFZ. It’s sad if that’s true. I for one have confidence that NRS is better than that.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

When tournament players like SonicFox and Honeybee as well as commentators such as K&M are clamoring for tournament custom variations, it kind of undermines the integrity concerns. But whatever. If NRS doesn’t feel they're able to balance it, then fine. At this point we’re arguing a question of NRS' competence.

Let’s acknowledge two things: a) perfect balance is never achievable, and b) there will always be some fraction of players who complain/don’t get what they want. That’s the reality of a fighting game. So the question is what constitutes “good enough” balance, and what will make the most number of players happy?

MvC3 had far from perfect balance and yet was a beloved game that had a very successful tournament life. So we know what the balance bar is for a game to have tournament cred. Are we saying that NRS can’t hit that bar with custom moves, which arguably provide even fewer choices than MvC3?

And regarding the number of players who will complain, most polls show 60%+ of the player base wants custom moves in tournament and/or ranked, including some of the top players. Are we saying that more than 60% will be upset if custom moves are allowed? How does that math even work unless NRS completely breaks the game?

None of those arguments make sense unless you assume NRS is really so incompetent compared to Capcom or Arc when it comes to game balance that they can’t allow as much player choice as MvC or DBFZ. It’s sad if that’s true. I for one have confidence that NRS is better than that.

MvC3 was loved because it was cartoony and wacky and broken. That’s not afforded to NRS games. We already know what the reaction is both inside and outside of the community when our game is broken, and it’s not pretty.

In fact, not even SFV can live that way, as their own community would rip it to shreds if it had marvel-esque levels of brokenness.

It’s just a bad comparison.

 

[Inzzane_79]

What´s so hard to give it a try and if it´s too busted go back to tournament variations?

 

[STB Sgt Reed]

I'll never understand why you'd make a game and advertise the fuck out of all this cool stuff your characters can do and all this awesome customization and then say, OH but if you want to play this game seriously, you can't use any of this stuff!

Let's just do away with variations if customs won't be allowed. I wanna be able to use all the abilities in the game. As is, there's ton of moves that NRS put time and love into designing that I'll literally never see/use. Wasted development.