Do you want the Variation System to return to MK12?

[KingKhrystopher]

Do you want Variations to return in MK11?

Personally, I'll just have to give a no. I had faith in NRS that they could enhance the Variation system from MKX, because I personally liked the Variation system from MKX. Sure, there was typically one Variation that was largely considered the best/favorite (Royal Storm Kitana, Shirai Ryu Takeda, Kobu Jutsu Tanya), but there were also some characters that had really fun Variations regardless of the Variation you were playing (for me personally, Takeda, Quan Chi, Tanya, Mileena, Erron Black, Sub-Zero, Alien, D'Vorah, TRI-BORG (Tri-Borg is in my opinion BY FAR the best example of the Variation system doing well in MKX). Generally, it felt cool to go and play your main, and have 3 different versions of said characters to choose from, and although most people played 1 specific Variation, I thought it was cool to have characters who had different specialties in each Variation, like how Kano was a lot more of a grappler in Commando than the other two, or how Quan Chi had the Vortex situations in Summoner that he didn't have elsewhere. I thought that was really unique to MK specifically.

But in MK11? For whatever reason, i feel like they dropped the ball so hard with this one. Might be because custom Variations exist, and we KNOW that it would theoretically be possible to combine certain abilities to make an ideal Variation, but I feel like the MK11 variations are so shallow. Each Variation is so barebones and typically doesn't even change much. Take Cetrion for example; she gains 2 abilities in both her first AND third Variations. TWO. While I'm not understating how effected Geyser/Teleport is, it's literally just TWO abilities they slapped onto her and said, "Oh yeah, that's it." And this is the case with many Variations. You get 2/3 abilities, and maybe some combo strings if you're someone like Jax or Erron Black, and to some degree, Jade. Very few sweeping changes come to many of the Variations like Mounrful Kitana, Ronin Takeda, or Dualist Liu Kang. To me, this makes the Variation system feel really lackluster and not distinctive to each Variation. In fact, most Variations feel like different ways to do the same thing, just with a different animation, which is arguably the Variation system in MKX, but I was hoping they'd improve on it this time around. But at this point I just don't trust NRS with the system anymore. I'd rather they just take like 50% of the special moves that would be reserved for Variations and just add those to the base movesets so that we get more whole charaters, and potentially more characters besides and don't end up with things like Soul Eater Liu Kang and Highborn Kitana.

But that's my 2 cents.

 

[xenogorgeous]

hope not; the variation system for MK11 was a cool promoted ideia, until the moment you suddenly found out that you cannot have that 100% customizable cool moveset you had in mind, to be allowed to be used at competitive level, so, fake news, bad progaganda in the end .... pitiful to say the last

so, I'm on to next game, they build characters with a good moveset, but completed one, and let players use whatever they want, with no variations of any kind

anyway, I doubt that will occur; and we will probably receiving another crap shit variation system type, worse than this one current on MK11, lol !

"Hope for the best and prepare for the worst" as that very wise old saying, hehe

 

[DayAlreadySucks]

I honesty don’t think they were even necessary this time around, especially when a lot of characters have one variation that’s even worth playing in a competitive setting

 

[John Grizzly]

MK12 will launch with one variation per character.

But seriously, the variation system needs to go. Most players want one complete character, not a fragmented character across 3 variations. In most cases, only one variation is played, so it's pointless anyway. Although I do think you see more variety as far as variations being played in tournament than we did with MKX.

Either way, we are soooo far away from the next MK game, that I see very little purpose in even discussing this right now.

 

[HeavyNorse]

Custom variations all the way.

 

[Vhozite]

Gonna say it again but there is nothing inherently wrong with variations as an idea. The failure comes from NRS using the system as duct tape fix to address balance between abilities instead of actually addressing them directly. Spring Cleaning Cetrion is a prime example of why this approach is ass

MKX variations were good 11's variations feel a couple special moves tacked to a base kit.

X variations were like choosing between McDonald's, Taco Bell, and KFC. 11's variations mostly feel like all McDonald's but you just choose your drink.

 

[Zviko]

Custom variations for competitive play is the worst idea ever. If you think it's boring and with no character variety now, think about it. With custom variations, once Sonic and other pros find the perfect combination for every character, that's all we would see. 1, perfect variation per character. The current system is good, all they need to do is balance it better. Some characters already have 2 and some even 3 viable variations.

 

[Marlow]

I'm fine with how it is now. But if they just decided to ditch the variation system altogether I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.

 

[OutworldKeith]

Hell no. I’ve said this before, but I was honestly surprised when they announced its return for MK11.

 

[THTB]

No to variations, yes to custom movesets.

 

[Slymind]

Yes easily, i can't go back to no variation, characters feel much more complete to me this way, and if you think no variation means every move will be part of the base kit, you are delusional. No variation means, pick one current variation in the current game(or MKX) and that's it.

 

[Iustinus]

Pls no

 

[HeavyNorse]

What I worry about if there were no custom abilities to choose from is that then the characters are either forced to be played a certain way, or is just not that good at doing any of the things.

Take Jade, for example. If there were no custom abilities or variations, she might just be focused only on being a zoner, all about throwing those glaives. And that was all she was good at. That's never how I've played her, because that was never her main focus in the past games, so that would sour my experience on playing what was once my favourite character of the franchise.

By opening up the gameplay experience with custom abilities, you're given different tools to put together the toolset that fits you the best with whatever character you wish to play. If I wanna play a zoning Jade, I can do that. If I wanna play a rushdown Jade, I can do that! If I wanna focus on doing some combos, I can do that!

NRS introduced custom abilities/variations into the franchise now. Taking that out in the next game would feel stifling and lacking. And I'd prefer that instead of removing them from the game, they should do what they can to make it work!

 

[ShepherdOfFire]

I like the way Injustice 2 handled its custom moves. Just available in casual play but in competitive you just have one complete moveset per character and that's it.

However I prefer having no custom move at all, just like MK9, but have more characters in the base roster. They should just keep the visual customization of the characters. It would be great that way.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

However I prefer having no custom move at all, just like MK9, but have more characters in the base roster. They should just keep the visual customization of the characters. It would be great that way.

I don't think you're going to see more than 25-30 characters per game anyway (including DLC), because it's an absolutely nightmare to balance. And then complaining never ends about who is low tier, etc.

 

[ShepherdOfFire]

I don't think you're going to see more than 25-30 characters per game anyway, because it's an absolutely nightmare to balance. And then complaining never ends about who is low tier, etc.

I think it would be as difficult if not easier to balance a game with 30 fighters than MKX or MK11 where 25+ characters all have 3 variations each. And the complaining about tier list, like you just said, will never end, even if the game has 15 or 30 characters. If you want to ease the balancing of a fighting game, I don't think creating multi playstyles of a single character is the best solution at all.

I don't think what I'm asking for is too much. MK11 has 25 characters with 6 to 8+ ability moves each. If all the development time spent to create the abilities went into new characters, I think we'd would have at least 3 more characters in the base roster. I know creating new characters isn't just about developing their move lists, but you understand what I'm saying.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I think it would be as difficult if not easier to balance a game with 30 fighters than MKX or MK11 where 25+ characters all have 3 variations each. And the complaining about tier list, like you just said, will never end, even if the game has 15 or 30 characters. If you want to ease the balancing of a fighting game, I don't think creating multi playstyles of a single character is the best solution at all.

I don't think what I'm asking for is too much. MK11 has 25 characters with 6 to 8+ ability moves each. If all the development time spent to create the abilities went into new characters, I think we'd would have at least 3 more characters in the base roster. I know creating new characters isn't just about developing their move lists, but you understand what I'm saying.

Yeah, I just think it takes a lot more work to create and balance a completely new character than just adding a fireball or something to a character that already has 6 specials.

It's kind of an assumption that every variation won't be equally as good, but you hope that most characters at least have 1-2 that are decent. But if they had to equally balance them all it'd probably take years.

 

[ZeroSymbolic]

I'd like something like a variation of rushdown, zoning, or balanced for each character so that you could play your fav regardless of playstyle. I think they kind of try to do this, but it's missing the mark.

 

[appo]

i think they should strip it down to 2 variations while giving them more moves to have more fleshed out chars and options with them.
non competitive moves shouldnt exist. its just a waste of resources.

 

[Darth Mao]

Triborg is the only example of the variation system doing well in any MK title, enough.

 

[spidey300]

no the fuck not. nrs has shown that they can't handle this

 

[xWildx]

Dear god no. If anything, just go the SF route and give us different supers to choose from.

 

[Blade4693]

It's a cool idea but at the end of the day most people end up just using one variation over the others. Plus some characters signature moves are limited to one variation which is weird like Raidens teleport and I have no proof of this next claim but it seems like because of this system more characters are borrowing moves from other characters. Not sure how this affects the roster if at all but Kitana having Jades moves in X and some of Mileena's in 11 makes me feel like they were left out because Kitana needed more stuff to work in the variation system.

Now maybe they were just thrown in as fun little references/easter eggs idk, BUT if they truly had to be left out because Kitana can't work in the system without "borrowing" other characters moves then maybe the system needs to go because we all know Kitana isn't going anywhere lol

I guess its a no from me dawg. Shoutout to Triborg though, that was a cool idea that worked thanks to the variation system and I still stand by my opinion that having the cyborgs in that way was better than none at all like in 11.

 

[KingKhrystopher]

What I worry about if there were no custom abilities to choose from is that then the characters are either forced to be played a certain way, or is just not that good at doing any of the things.

Take Jade, for example. If there were no custom abilities or variations, she might just be focused only on being a zoner, all about throwing those glaives. And that was all she was good at. That's never how I've played her, because that was never her main focus in the past games, so that would sour my experience on playing what was once my favourite character of the franchise.

By opening up the gameplay experience with custom abilities, you're given different tools to put together the toolset that fits you the best with whatever character you wish to play. If I wanna play a zoning Jade, I can do that. If I wanna play a rushdown Jade, I can do that! If I wanna focus on doing some combos, I can do that!

NRS introduced custom abilities/variations into the franchise now. Taking that out in the next game would feel stifling and lacking. And I'd prefer that instead of removing them from the game, they should do what they can to make it work!

I totally 100% agree with this and this was what I said talking to people on this site was the more variety of playstyles, but in most cases, NRS drops the ball with Variations. Very few characters in MK11 feel much different between Variations, it's most times just different ways to play a certain character a certain way. I've merely lost faith in NRS at this point to do the Variation system right. Though it's certainly possible.

I'd prefer that, Jade, for example, simply be able to do all of those things at once, rather than have a variation splitting the abilities between separate abilities. I feel like too many characters suffer from being very one dimensional in my opinion.

Suffice it to say, if NRS can actually do Variations the way I'd like, I'd love to see Variations again. I just feel like NRS just lost my faith in Variations, what with MK11 now.

 

[stokedAF]

I just want all of the best moves in one variation, personally.