PLAYING TO WIN
Champion
Hello tym and NRS fgc. Many of you know me, both infamously and competitively, in the NRS community. In my 15+ years in the fighting game scene I have seen a lot of things. I ask many of you to set aside your personal feelings toward me and take an unbiased look at the current state of MK11. Veterans in the scene and new comings alike, lets try to educate each other why many of us feel the way we do. An NRS game has never been maxed out within the first six months of its life. Will a third variation actually change anything or the length DLC release schedule help to maintain our attention as a community? Our discussion outlets are dead and resorted to non mk11 related content. In large part, we as the community could be a major reason the state of MK11. Should we have been more careful what we wished for? Is the line of thinking behind the gameplay simplicity true? I implore the community to take action at a level we have never done before though had the opportunity to. There is a way to ignite the fires and generate a lot of discussion and interest in the game in mandating full customization in all non NRS pro series events and eventually pro series at the conclusion of this season.
In all my years as a competitive player and lover of fighting games I have never seen a game maxed out within the first 6 months of the games life. It comes down to one word, bland. There was very little risk taken by the dev team concerning the creativity control given to the players. Take almost any character variation to the lab and tell me where there is freedom to continue developing a character? It is as close to non existent as I have ever seen. I challenge anyone to tell me when the last time something came out to change a character or their meta? I have been lucky to train with amazing players through my career including m2dave, forever king, thtb, king jr, master d, pig and the list goes on and on and on. Through the life of the previous games there was an eb and flow of matchups and winners/losers. The best example of this is the legendary evolution of Sinestro vs Zod. There were days when each of us would literally blow each other up. The change in guard correlated with major finds for each character. Sinestro vortex, zod laser cancel, the full ability of sinestro trait, zod wraith grab cancel, max damage, push block combos, perfection of zod balls, and more. All of these milestones changed the matchups tremendously. This progression took place over 3 years of the game. Because the characters have very little room for innovation we are not seeing matches evolve and the game is only 5 months old!
Will a third variation change anything? Maybe. Likely not. Most of the characters in the game already have their best possible variation. New characters help? Likely not. Mark my words that Terminator's best variation will be known in 3 days and they characters combo potential and strategies will be fleshed out within a month. This is a tough question to ask and will be better reflected in the games major tournament entry numbers and stream viewers relative to other major games.
The fire in our community is at a level normally seen between the death of a game and the announcement of another. TYM character discussions are a grave yard, twitter is back to bickering and inappropriate non game discussion and discords are also dead. People are bored. The blandness of the current state of MK11 does not allow for new tech or game changing character development. There is a simple solution to this discussed in the last paragraph.
MK9, I1, MKX were heavy with discussions questioning the balance capabilities of the NRS staff and our lord and savior paulo garcia otherwise knows as colt on the boards. From cyrax bomb resets to I1 pre patch scorpion to martian manhunter to tanya to removing all armored launchers in mkx. The freedom in the game's engine that allowed for a tremendous amount of character development was destroyed by NRS desire to make mk11 the most balanced game they have ever produced which it is and props are much deserved for this. We have to ask ourselves a hard questions... is this what we really want? I am just as guilty as the next OG that used to complain about this in previous games. It is almost like we didn't know what we were asking for. I will say this... although I bitched about the rush down in MKX I was still very engaged, labbing and seeing characters develop over several years. In mk11 I open up training mode with cetrion, shang, highorn and others and I will go... "what the hell am I supposed to lab?" All these characters are already maxed out in terms of strategy and combo potential. I remember when I could watch mk11 and say, "Ya that is Michelangelo's kabal and thats reo's kabal." or "That is perfect legends lao and that is DJTs." That almost doesn't exist in this game. So, are we to blame for the lack of freedom that exists to the players concerning the games engine? There is a lot of talk from prominent FGC members, seth killian or ultra david, that support the games should be about what players want to happen rather than an execution barrier. Easier to play games allow more access. One begs the questions, why is Tekken so huge when it is arguably of the hardest to play games, huge learning curve and a tremendous amount of depth? IMO it is because players invest a large amount of time with a return. The return is after a 1000 reps of a combo or execution (EWGF, predator cancel combos, c viper insta air flame kicks and cancel combos, kabal cancel execution and hit confirms, consistent one frame links) and the perfection. I still remember the feeling I had after mastering SInestro's push block combos (Even when they were patched to 0 damage they still had a function) or when I could actually consistently do predator cancel combos.
As a community we have had many opportunities to influence the competitive scene and not done so. Of course there were the days of 1000+ post threads asking for nerfs but when have we ever truly took a stand for the betterment of our competitive scene? Currently we want FT3 but refuse to do this even in non MK pro tour events, we didn't ban things like cyrax bomb resets or kabal that 7-3'ed almost the entire cast, we let characters like i1 pre patch scorp and mkx pre patch tanya used in competitive play, et cetera. Now we have another chance and I believe it will positively affect all of the perceived negatives that mk11 has given us. ALL NON MK11 PRO TOUR EVENTS WILL ALLOW FULL CUSTOMIZATION. This will engulf the boards and discussion outlets, it will further allow character development and NRS to show off its numerous moves/animations that are otherwise buried, it will almost ALWAYS show us something new on streams, it will given our characters personality and depth which we rarely see. If we actually do this, NRS will positively respond... I promise... as they always do and correct some of the barriers such as allowing us to change loadouts at the select screen.
Added to OP bc they discussion flowed over to the most popular podcast in our community.
In all my years as a competitive player and lover of fighting games I have never seen a game maxed out within the first 6 months of the games life. It comes down to one word, bland. There was very little risk taken by the dev team concerning the creativity control given to the players. Take almost any character variation to the lab and tell me where there is freedom to continue developing a character? It is as close to non existent as I have ever seen. I challenge anyone to tell me when the last time something came out to change a character or their meta? I have been lucky to train with amazing players through my career including m2dave, forever king, thtb, king jr, master d, pig and the list goes on and on and on. Through the life of the previous games there was an eb and flow of matchups and winners/losers. The best example of this is the legendary evolution of Sinestro vs Zod. There were days when each of us would literally blow each other up. The change in guard correlated with major finds for each character. Sinestro vortex, zod laser cancel, the full ability of sinestro trait, zod wraith grab cancel, max damage, push block combos, perfection of zod balls, and more. All of these milestones changed the matchups tremendously. This progression took place over 3 years of the game. Because the characters have very little room for innovation we are not seeing matches evolve and the game is only 5 months old!
Will a third variation change anything? Maybe. Likely not. Most of the characters in the game already have their best possible variation. New characters help? Likely not. Mark my words that Terminator's best variation will be known in 3 days and they characters combo potential and strategies will be fleshed out within a month. This is a tough question to ask and will be better reflected in the games major tournament entry numbers and stream viewers relative to other major games.
The fire in our community is at a level normally seen between the death of a game and the announcement of another. TYM character discussions are a grave yard, twitter is back to bickering and inappropriate non game discussion and discords are also dead. People are bored. The blandness of the current state of MK11 does not allow for new tech or game changing character development. There is a simple solution to this discussed in the last paragraph.
MK9, I1, MKX were heavy with discussions questioning the balance capabilities of the NRS staff and our lord and savior paulo garcia otherwise knows as colt on the boards. From cyrax bomb resets to I1 pre patch scorpion to martian manhunter to tanya to removing all armored launchers in mkx. The freedom in the game's engine that allowed for a tremendous amount of character development was destroyed by NRS desire to make mk11 the most balanced game they have ever produced which it is and props are much deserved for this. We have to ask ourselves a hard questions... is this what we really want? I am just as guilty as the next OG that used to complain about this in previous games. It is almost like we didn't know what we were asking for. I will say this... although I bitched about the rush down in MKX I was still very engaged, labbing and seeing characters develop over several years. In mk11 I open up training mode with cetrion, shang, highorn and others and I will go... "what the hell am I supposed to lab?" All these characters are already maxed out in terms of strategy and combo potential. I remember when I could watch mk11 and say, "Ya that is Michelangelo's kabal and thats reo's kabal." or "That is perfect legends lao and that is DJTs." That almost doesn't exist in this game. So, are we to blame for the lack of freedom that exists to the players concerning the games engine? There is a lot of talk from prominent FGC members, seth killian or ultra david, that support the games should be about what players want to happen rather than an execution barrier. Easier to play games allow more access. One begs the questions, why is Tekken so huge when it is arguably of the hardest to play games, huge learning curve and a tremendous amount of depth? IMO it is because players invest a large amount of time with a return. The return is after a 1000 reps of a combo or execution (EWGF, predator cancel combos, c viper insta air flame kicks and cancel combos, kabal cancel execution and hit confirms, consistent one frame links) and the perfection. I still remember the feeling I had after mastering SInestro's push block combos (Even when they were patched to 0 damage they still had a function) or when I could actually consistently do predator cancel combos.
As a community we have had many opportunities to influence the competitive scene and not done so. Of course there were the days of 1000+ post threads asking for nerfs but when have we ever truly took a stand for the betterment of our competitive scene? Currently we want FT3 but refuse to do this even in non MK pro tour events, we didn't ban things like cyrax bomb resets or kabal that 7-3'ed almost the entire cast, we let characters like i1 pre patch scorp and mkx pre patch tanya used in competitive play, et cetera. Now we have another chance and I believe it will positively affect all of the perceived negatives that mk11 has given us. ALL NON MK11 PRO TOUR EVENTS WILL ALLOW FULL CUSTOMIZATION. This will engulf the boards and discussion outlets, it will further allow character development and NRS to show off its numerous moves/animations that are otherwise buried, it will almost ALWAYS show us something new on streams, it will given our characters personality and depth which we rarely see. If we actually do this, NRS will positively respond... I promise... as they always do and correct some of the barriers such as allowing us to change loadouts at the select screen.
Added to OP bc they discussion flowed over to the most popular podcast in our community.
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