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(Discussion) The Unprecedented Stated of MK11

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.

 
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CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
So let's see:

-EVO was the biggest tournament ever in history for one of our games
-Celtic Throwdown was universally agreed to be hype
-Dreamhack was incredibly hype
-Destroyer's qualifiers have been hype

-We have a burgeoning rivalry between Sonic and Ninjakilla
-We have new(er) blood tearing stuff up with Deoxys and others

But "the fire in our community"

Right..

You're trying so hard to force the scene to be dead, when the tournament circuit is actually doing better than it has in years.
 
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ticklebandit!

Apprentice
I agree with a lot of what OP said. I think what really hinders MK games is that the variation system is too limiting. Its too shallow for players to really give characters their own personal style. I thought this for both MKX and MK11. Allowing custom variations is a step in the right direction but straight up giving all variations another slot (or two, what the hell) would really amp things up to another level imo.
 

NaCl man

Welcome to Akihabara
Would removing the slots and instead allowing players to use all abilities make for an unbalanced mess? I don't see the harm, but I'm not a competitive player. I'm just a lifelong fan who finds it frustrating that I have to pick and choose what special moves are available.
yeah it would . Think if LHQ liu also had flame buff and a teleport.
 

thlityoursloat

kick kick
A third variation may or may not change anything depending on whether they balance the still unused moves. Some characters' third variations would probably be pointless as fuck (most of JC's custom moves for example are quite bad, this is already evident in his 1st variation). Some would be OD, like I recall Jax having his old launching ground pound which I'm not sure would fit the game's meta, and a string that would give him fully heated arms in 1 unbreakable sequence.
Whether they do it before or after introducing the 3rd variation, idk, if it's after then it's probably going to be at least 6+ months from now and by then I don't think I'd be remotely interested in the game anymore.
 
So let's see:

-EVO was the biggest tournament ever in history for one of our games
-Celtic Throwdown was universally agreed to be hype
-Dreamhack was incredibly hype
-Destroyer's qualifiers have been hype

-We have a burgeoning rivalry between Sonic and Ninjakilla
-We have new(er) blood tearing stuff up with Deoxys and others

But "the fire in our community"

Right..

You're trying so hard to force the scene to be dead, when the tournament circuit is actually doing better than it has in years.
Does NRS pay you to shove your head that far up their ass? Like... do they provide wipes for you when you choose to occasionally retract your nose from their sphincter?

The people want to know.
 

ogrimtitan

Mortal
The extreme caution taken with the variation system just went way too far. Characters have no depth or tech to figure out, really, and all the actually interesting moves never see competitive play. You just go into every match with the goal of executing your blockstring over and over, threatening with throws, until you can convert into your combo path, then rinse and repeat. What's to explore? And half the roster can't even do that and so doesn't get played. The best characters in this game are two-branch flowcharts, and the worst are just a bunch of boxes not connected by flow lines.

Look at a game like Samurai Shodown. It has the shortest combos I've seen in a fighting game since the early 90s. But there's so much tension in a match because EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER has half-a-dozen ways to delete almost your entire life bar for a single mistake.
 
So let's see:

-EVO was the biggest tournament ever in history for one of our games
-Celtic Throwdown was universally agreed to be hype
-Dreamhack was incredibly hype
-Destroyer's qualifiers have been hype

-We have a burgeoning rivalry between Sonic and Ninjakilla
-We have new(er) blood tearing stuff up with Deoxys and others

But "the fire in our community"

Right..

You're trying so hard to force the scene to be dead, when the tournament circuit is actually doing better than it has in years.
Whether you know this or not your opinions are universally regarded as NRS yes man and your response to this thread further proves that. If you think this game has any level of depth you truely are an FGC simpleton and have zero competitive clout.

As the community engineer you also had many opportunities to help the scene but really have not done a damn thing. Where is the tym team? Where is the tym
Tournament series? Where was the initiative to get players back on the site? Where is the updated events calendar and event hubs level dedication to the community? No where. But I do see a million shit posts and longest threads in history convincing yourself that NRS can do no wrong.

When will members of this sit have the ability to ignore you? Please add that feature @STORMS

This thread should be front pages as it raises a million concerns with the state of the game.
 
A third variation may or may not change anything depending on whether they balance the still unused moves. Some characters' third variations would probably be pointless as fuck (most of JC's custom moves for example are quite bad, this is already evident in his 1st variation). Some would be OD, like I recall Jax having his old launching ground pound which I'm not sure would fit the game's meta, and a string that would give him fully heated arms in 1 unbreakable sequence.
Whether they do it before or after introducing the 3rd variation, idk, if it's after then it's probably going to be at least 6+ months from now and by then I don't think I'd be remotely interested in the game anymore.
Exactly. I don’t see myself making it through all the dlc I paid for in the first time in NRS games life.
 
Does NRS pay you to shove your head that far up their ass? Like... do they provide wipes for you when you choose to occasionally retract your nose from their sphincter?

The people want to know.
Seriously I’m 100% convinced he is trying to get a job there and it is painfully obvious and sad that the community engineer really doesn’t do a thing for the scene or this site.
 

thlityoursloat

kick kick
Exactly. I don’t see myself making it through all the dlc I paid for in the first time in NRS games life.
What an absolute scam. They claimed to support the game for 2 years, yet all they're doing is stretching the same amount of content and even patching frequency out to longer periods of time.
"but this is how other FGs are!" Yeah, not previous NRS FGs, which is where expectations were set.
 

Wigy

There it is...
So let's see:

-EVO was the biggest tournament ever in history for one of our games
-Celtic Throwdown was universally agreed to be hype
-Dreamhack was incredibly hype
-Destroyer's qualifiers have been hype

-We have a burgeoning rivalry between Sonic and Ninjakilla
-We have new(er) blood tearing stuff up with Deoxys and others

But "the fire in our community"

Right..

You're trying so hard to force the scene to be dead, when the tournament circuit is actually doing better than it has in years.
Are you trying to get a job at NRS or something.

I've never seen someone so consistently shill for something so hard I can't take any of your posts seriously.

@PLAYING TO WIN

Great post. I used to spend ages in the lab and come up with stuff but character tech is so barren, that was a huge portion of the fun for me.

If you need to strip depth and mechanical skill to balance a game you're not doing your job properly.
 
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The_Tile

Your hole is mine!
I feel like there's a major flaw in the argument that "no new tech is coming out, the game is dead". You mentioned Injustice with the game developing a lot over the course of 3 years, which is true.

Well we're 5 months into the game right now. How do we know that there isn't gonna be major meta/tech developments over the rest of the game's life? Feel like we're calling it too early when we say stuff like that, especially seeing as there actually IS new developments with the Raptor OS which was discovered like a week ago.
 

ExpectFlames

Lord of embers
I feel like there's a major flaw in the argument that "no new tech is coming out, the game is dead". You mentioned Injustice with the game developing a lot over the course of 3 years, which is true.

Well we're 5 months into the game right now. How do we know that there isn't gonna be major meta/tech developments over the rest of the game's life? Feel like we're calling it too early when we say stuff like that, especially seeing as there actually IS new developments with the Raptor OS which was discovered like a week ago.
Raptors OS is systemic of the problem though, it feels less like tech and more like a bug. Any dev who puts in a way to make everything hidden safe in a random way like it is didn't intend for it to be that way or is retarted. Theres no way to know which way NRS is because they havent said anything anytime something is going wrong silence. The ops mot wrong the only tech that's truly been found is the scope of depravity that's this games hitboxes, finding johnny does good in a matchup because his hurtbox whiffs an incoming mid while blocking is the definition of stupid.
 

Evil Canadian

G O K U
Elder God
Definitely usually laugh at all your post. TYM hierarchy sure does stick together I commend the unity agaisnt sensible opinion from the "community engineer" and "royal contributors"
Yes I am definitely part of the TYM hierarchy whatever the fuck that is. Im probably hte top of it too so you better watch the fuck out or ill use my powers on you