New Era Podcast

[rifraf]

They definitely didn’t use MK9 as a “canvas” for MK1.

You really think so? I do think they did at least to a certain extent. The movement, the pacing, the systems like EX bar, 1st hit, combo breaker, wakeup invincibility, EX attacks, armoured moves, etc. I think they took all of these as a base, and built upon it by adding some MK11 things like Fatal Blows and Flawless block, and new systems like upblock, air-kombat and kameos.

In a scenario you were to remove kameos, you'd have something very close to MK9 imo. With a much less powerful top10.

EDIT: Of course, the character movesets and even some character roles are completely revamped and are unique to MK1.

 

[Juggs]

You really think so?

Yes, I do. I can understand why you or others would feel that they did use it as canvas though.

 

[CanoCano]

Sindel levitation cancels were hype in 9 and took more skill.

Only because flight had a very silly input, if you changed it to DB2 like it is now i'd bet money on it that they'd take the same amount of skill

Hardly touched the game since Quan has been out but I'd rather see Rune traps than whatever he does now.

If you don't even know what he has now then don't speak on it

Two variations, one defensive/one offensive, which can tightly combo into one another. MKX Raiden was fun af. Imagine if you could switch from Thunder God to Master of Storms on a dime. We would still be playing this shit to this day. Bleh

If you want to juggle around stances then go play the 3D games, why mop around all day thinking of what you wished for MKX to play like when you can go ahead and play something you'll like for free

 

[Son ov Timett]

Bro, can I comment on a Franchise I've given a shit ton of money to? Or do you want TYM to be a hug box? Your attempt to silence, is perceived as violence. Please discontinue you continual retorts to oppress my voice as I find it extremely uncomfortable.

PayPal me $120 and I'll never speak on MK1 again. Elsewise, dont acknowledge me, as I'm finding all this attention from your end to be "sus."

P.S May Lord Brady have mercy upon your soul.

 

[CanoCano]

Bro wants to be oppresed so bad

 

[Son ov Timett]

Bro wants to be oppresed so bad

Bruh, you know I'm just trying to take the piss eh? Nothing personal, love all you TYMers, even if you have questionable taste in NRS titles.

MK1 is so boring, only joy I get is trolling MK1 fans. That's how I get my $110 of enjoyment.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

I'm curious what makes MK1 boring to people.

Because when I would call MK11 boring, I called it boring because of the lack of character expression. Characters had 1 (sometimes no) launcher, the same combo filler, the same ender and no oki afterwards because of the wakeup system. Everybody had the gameplan of stagger stagger throw.

MK1 has character expression out the ass. You can do so much in this game. It really does remind me of MKX where I could happily sit in training mode with a character for hours thinking of so many possibilities.

 

[rifraf]

I'm curious what makes MK1 boring to people.

Actual things we've heard from people other than "it's boring, I don't like it, etc."

1. No specific character archetypes (Although true to an extent, I don't see how it ties to the game being boring)
2. Low power lvl on half the cast (Mostly true)
3. Repetitive kameo moves (There are specific kameo moves that are meta since launch resulting in a somewhat stale meta)
4. Neutral is apparently considered boring by some (lol, no comment)
5. Not fast enough for some (to each their own, I don't see how this ties to the game being boring)

 

[Juggs]

I'm curious what makes MK1 boring to people.

-Very good setplay
-Safe fck neutral tools or can be made safe via Kameo
-The safe fck neutral tools can lead to the repetitive setplay
-The safe fck neutral tools either do decent damage or can lead to actual combos
-Throw combos on throws that are in and of themselves 50/50’s
-Lack of character diversity (as far as the characters players choose to pick) and the good characters typically aren’t very fun to play against or watch

 

[CrimsonShadow]

The only thing he's missing is that those players from the rest of the FGC who casually pick up other games and register for them only do so for 3-4 months. You can look at our competitive player base picking up/streaming T8, and that's about how long they lasted.

So if it's more than 3-4 months away from release of a smaller game, you will never have the same numbers that you would with a tournament in the first few months.

Other than that, he's spot-on about serious players liking the gameplay, and how a meta featuring extra elements (someone called it "complex" in another thread) is not really targeted at casuals. To me, as far as fighting games go, MK1 is not particularly complex. But I guess to someone that's not used to any fundamentally necessary mechanics in MK games outside of moving back and forth and doing combos, something like an assist or the mechanics of Sento is a big mental leap.

Here’s Tweedy basically saying what I said. The people who are still playing a game after 3-4 months are the actual fans of the game.

https://x.com/i/web/status/1810029909034623309

 

[M2Dave]

No one is truly doing that though, it's just that each one is dealing with things they don't like differently. I hate speaking for others, but let's take Crimson for example. He clearly stated in his latest post that even though he didn't love MKX' meta, he tried playing the game and still supported the scene. That's one way of dealing with it. Me. I didn't care. When MKX was a thing, I just didn't care to be around anything MK because I realised that game wasn't for me at all. That's another way.

First of all, Mortal Kombat 1 is losing to Under Night In-Birth II Sys: Celes, a game that most players, even in the FGC, have never heard of. If you are exclusively blaming the community and specific players and/or content creators, you are most certainly apologizing on behalf of NRS and Mortal Kombat 1. If Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 had been beaten by Under Night In-Birth II Sys: Celes, Capcom and Namco would be implementing substantial changes to Street Fighter and Tekken, respectively.

Second of all, if you know how I prefer to play, then you know that Mortal Kombat X is not my cup of tea. Unlike Mortal Kombat 11 and 1, two games designed to lull the player base to sleep, X was never boring to play and watch, particularly from the casual gamers' perspective. I have several issues with Mortal Kombat X, but if such a game is the best that NRS is capable of designing, I approve.

Since we are quoting Tweedy, let me repeat the quote...

"Mortal Kombat 1 looks like shit."

 

[Son ov Timett]

Has Tweedy even left his living room to support this game that he is still playing 1 year in? Dude is satisfied making beer money off sensationalized YouTube vids. "Ohhhhhh Muh Gawd this new patch will save the gaaaaaame."

Dude is defending the numbers on Twitter, but readily releases videos on YouTube that the game is dying.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

-Very good setplay
-Safe fck neutral tools or can be made safe via Kameo
-The safe fck neutral tools can lead to the repetitive setplay
-The safe fck neutral tools either do decent damage or can lead to actual combos
-Throw combos on throws that are in and of themselves 50/50’s
-Lack of character diversity (as far as the characters players choose to pick) and the good characters typically aren’t very fun to play against or watch

I mean half of what you said is what makes an assist game an assist game. That's the crossroads I think we're at with MK1. Do we unleash the Kameos and truly make this a whacky setplay fighting game, or do we dial it back and reduce the kameos to just glorified special moves.

I personally don't think that we'll gain anything at all by making the kameos even more restrictive, but I don't think making them even more powerful is the answer unless there's further drawbacks. The way Marvel handles assists, yeah they're extremely powerful, but if you make a bad call you're losing that character for the rest of the match. Kameos can't be juggled in this game, but I do have to wonder if it should be made that kameos can receive ground combos, and if hit with a launcher or popup they fly away. I'm brainstorming as I type this but seeing how Kameos don't have their own health pool and instead borrow from the player, I think to better facilitate Happy Birthdays (where both characters are combo'd at one time) they should implement recoverable health.

So if you make a bad Kano call. I do a grounded Geras combo that deals 300 damage normal + 150 damage recoverable health because Kano was caught in it too. I think this could help with the chip situation too.

 

[Marinjuana]

Yeah I'm skeptical that the seemingly low numbers are a result of how people view the gameplay at a high level.

They definitely botched their potential MK hype train. They didn't hit the ground running on release, the game lacks content compared to its competitors, it has easy things to hate on like game modes in the menu that aren't selectable. It's just easy to criticize. Meanwhile there's a crazy amount of great games to play, including Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 sitting right there for people who are interested in fighting games. Those games are just better for esports too, it is what it is, we can't even get our youtubers to get monetized without blue screens on fatalities and stuff.

 

[Juggs]

I mean half of what you said is what makes an assist game an assist game. That's the crossroads I think we're at with MK1. Do we unleash the Kameos and truly make this a whacky setplay fighting game, or do we dial it back and reduce the kameos to just glorified special moves.

People keep comparing MK1 to other assist games, but the fundamental gameplay is vastly different. Just because there’s assists that doesn’t mean they can or should behave similarly to other assist games. And I completely appreciate this line of reasoning because I initially thought that as well. I initially had the exact same mentality. But after realizing that MK1 isn’t comparable to the other assist fighters, I started to understand what some of the issues I had with the game were.

So, it’s not that the Kameos are too crazy on their own, it’s that in conjunction with the core gameplay, and the gameplay of the actual characters, all of these things together make a rather boring state of play instead of making it a crazy and fun one, in my personal opinion.

Also aside from that aspect, the lack of variety in character AND Kameo choices also contributes to the game being more boring than exciting. And a lot of that has to do with balance. And I don’t count 1 offs of someone picking a different character in top 16 or even top 8 as “variety”. I’m referring to the top characters and Kameos that are consistently played. And as I’ve been saying for a decade or so now, I’m still in favor of very slight nerfs to the top tier, while 80% of the cast gets buffs. Unfortunately I realize this is NEVER going to happen, but that won’t stop me from advocating for it!

 

[CrimsonShadow]

And as I’ve been saying for a decade or so now, I’m still in favor of very slight nerfs to the top tier, while 80% of the cast gets buffs. Unfortunately I realize this is NEVER going to happen, but that won’t stop me from advocating for it!

I mean, this has basically been the balance strategy so far. Slight nerfs to Johnny, Kenshi, and the other top tier. And buffs each patch to other characters.

Judging by Ed's tweet/polls it seems like this is going to continue.

 

[Juggs]

I mean, this has basically been the balance strategy so far. Slight nerfs to Johnny, Kenshi, and the other top tier. And buffs each patch to other characters.

Judging by Ed's tweet/polls it seems like this is going to continue.

Which is a good start, but I wish they would pick up the pace

 

[rifraf]

do we dial it back and reduce the kameos to just glorified special moves.

I would argue, outside of very few kameo moves, that's exactly what they are and personally I think there's nothing wrong with that. Similar to what Juggs has been saying, I think the main focus should be on the main cast with lots of buffs and fleshing out there. I want every character to feel as complete as Ermac.

In a scenario they were to dial back kameos, the only ones affected would probably be Goro, Kano, Khameleon and Stryker.

It's unacceptable imo in a fighting game to know your opponents next move, and have to sit there and take it anyways without any options available in your arsenal. A character throws an unsafe special move and then presses 1 button to make it safe AND locks me into place, essentially putting me in a loop. The only move the game gives me is my armoured move which I have to spend resource and time it correctly. In scenarios like that, my armoured move is GARBAGE. lol Why should I be punished for getting a read?? This is just absurd and I think it's very clear it hurts the game competitively.

 

[rifraf]

First of all, Mortal Kombat 1 is losing to Under Night In-Birth II Sys: Celes, a game that most players, even in the FGC, have never heard of. If you are exclusively blaming the community and specific players and/or content creators, you are most certainly apologizing on behalf of NRS and Mortal Kombat 1. If Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 had been beaten by Under Night In-Birth II Sys: Celes, Capcom and Namco would be implementing substantial changes to Street Fighter and Tekken, respectively.

Second of all, if you know how I prefer to play, then you know that Mortal Kombat X is not my cup of tea. Unlike Mortal Kombat 11 and 1, two games designed to lull the player base to sleep, X was never boring to play and watch, particularly from the casual gamers' perspective. I have several issues with Mortal Kombat X, but if such a game is the best that NRS is capable of designing, I approve.

Since we are quoting Tweedy, let me repeat the quote...

"Mortal Kombat 1 looks like shit."

I'm not blaming anyone. My examples were meant to show that each person deals with things they don't like differently, and I guess you being overly dramatic is your way of doing things. If you weren't overly dramatic and sentimental, you'd probably be interested in engaging in conversations about making MK1 a better version of itself. But you're not, which is fine. But you are very hyperbolic when it comes to MK1.

Regarding the "best game NRS is capable of designing" that's something almost every single MK fan will answer differently because of the fact each game is so different. That's just NRS doing its thing, for better or worse. lol

 

[LEGEND]

Sindel, Kenshi, Shang, Ermac, Smoke and Quan Chi are all deeper and more interesting in MK1 than they were in MK9.

Kitana, Liu, Johnny, Scorp, Sub, Baraka, Mileena about the same

Kung Lao might be the only character from both games that was more interesting in MK9 due to teleport shenanigans and divekick mobility.

I feel like in MK1 there is alot of "these few things are the best things to be doing and nothing else". So, while alot of characters might be more deep in terms of the amount of moves they have. In reality they have less functional tools. Like Shang and Quan do basically nothing in this game that could be considered functional because zoning is so ass, and their other tools are so sub-par. Their complexity comes from Morph combos and portal setups respectively, which do nothing for them to actually be able to play the game.

I can nitpick some of your other examples too but overall, I think this comes down to "deep and interesting" being more subjective than objective.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I feel like in MK1 there is alot of "these few things are the best things to be doing and nothing else". So, while alot of characters might be more deep in terms of the amount of moves they have. In reality they have less functional tools. Like Shang and Quan do basically nothing in this game that could be considered functional because zoning is so ass, and their other tools are so sub-par. Their complexity comes from Morph combos and portal setups respectively, which do nothing for them to actually be able to play the game.

I can nitpick some of your other examples too but overall, I think this comes down to "deep and interesting" being more subjective than objective.

You're talking about balance though, which is a different subject altogether. A few frame data fixes and both characters could be competitive, without changing their overall design much at all.

If we want to cherry-pick balance examples, MK9 was in a much worse situation: there were characters whose pokes were actually negative on hit. Like, they weren't just not good, but fundamentally not playing the game at all.

Here's the best Shang playing in MK9
Here's a good Shang playing in MK1

Imo MK9 Shang has far less varied offense and is doing the same few things over and over, and that's by design. You can always balance the character, but the design is what it is.

 

[LEGEND]

You're talking about balance though, which is a different subject altogether. A few frame data fixes and both characters could be competitive, without changing their overall design much at all.

If we want to cherry-pick balance examples, MK9 was in a much worse situation: there were characters whose pokes were actually negative on hit. Like, they weren't just not good, but fundamentally not playing the game at all.

Here's the best Shang playing in MK9
Here's a good Shang playing in MK1

Imo MK9 Shang has far less varied offense and is doing the same few things over and over, and that's by design. You can always balance the character, but the design is what it is.

In short. Please stop using random cherry-picked clips and actually play these games.

You also misrepresent what I said and clearly miss the point.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

In short. Please stop using random cherry-picked clips and actually play these games.

You also misrepresent what I said and clearly miss the point.

If the best Shang playing against the Best Liu Kang at one of the most competitive tournaments for MK9 is cherry picked, then feel free to volunteer a better example. Shang's offense was what it was.

You brought up Quan as well. Let's compare his offense in both games:
MK9 Quan
MK1 Quan

I just picked the first MK1 Quan video that came up. Literally 20 seconds into the video you can see that his design is far more interesting and has far more depth in MK1. Not setups or any kind of highly situational combos; just his basic offense. In MK9 it was "maybe if he lands a hit he can Rune Trap!" and that was it.

I really enjoyed MK9, but the rose-colored glasses are crazy.

 

[LEGEND]

If the best Shang playing against the Best Liu Kang at one of the most competitive tournaments for MK9 is cherry picked, then feel free to volunteer a better example. Shang's offense was what it was.

You brought up Quan as well. Let's compare his offense in both games:
MK9 Quan
MK1 Quan

I just picked the first MK1 Quan video that came up. Literally 20 seconds into the video you can see that his design is far more interesting and has far more depth in MK1. Not morph combos or setups; just his basic offense. In MK9 it was "maybe if he lands a hit he can Rune Trap!" and that was it.

I really enjoyed MK9, but the rose-colored glasses are crazy.

I'm not watching the clips because they are random snapshots and don't discuss anything deep about the mechanics that I know you know nothing about because you haven't played either MK1 or MK9 at a high level.

You also didn't address my point at all. You are VERY bad at having real discussions without going off the rails. Like reducing the complexity of playing Quan at max potential to "maybe if he lands a hit he can rune trap" is silly. As there is obviously further optimization needed to ensure more loops of the runtrap are possible and stagger mixups that are needed. For someone that only watches and doesn't play, i would have assumed you would have watched Mayo's in-depth Quan videos but I guess not.

 

[LEGEND]

Like I'm not a big hater of MK1 and I have never said MK9 is more balanced by any means, but Crimson is so disingenuous with everything he says it really gets under my skin