NRS - Engine update history review (MK9 - Injustice 2) and suggestions for future improvement

cool post! fun to see how things have evolved.

You forgot to add NRS's introduction of the "float tier"; certain characters are able to retreat, advance, and even anti-air while on the ground all without a lower hurtbox. At the rate NRS is moving, I think I3 might be a "dogfight" fighter.

Da Tac0 said:

If you could make the AI play like top pro players instead of what seems like it's reading your inputs, I'd be thrilled.

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I recommend this suggestion. Skullgirls Story mode bosses, like Filia, Peacock and Double, helped me notice what's missing. The Very Hard AI. We need those kind for the practice. This will help us practice even more as if we're fighting against a real player. Skullgirls bosses helped me learn from my mistakes.

BTW, I suggest that NRS implements a mechanism to punish and ban the ragequitters. This way we can skip them and move on for the next opponent. Same goes for Wi-Fi users.

I suggest that NRS implement a thorough tutorial, like Skullgirls and Guilty Gears have.

For the advanced tutorial: I think an improvement could be to have the concepts be voiced over as well as in text.

Imagine how many more people would go through it if Batman or Johnny Cage explained what a punish was? You could even call it "Batcave Training" instead of "learn" and probably catch more eyes that way.

Tanno said:

BTW, I suggest that NRS implements a mechanism to punish and ban the ragequitters. This way we can skip them and move on for the next opponent. Same goes for Wi-Fi users.

I suggest that NRS implement a thorough tutorial, like Skullgirls and Guilty Gears have.

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What about the current Inj2 tutorial hub? I don't know how good the tutorials from SG and GG are but I thought the new Injustice 2 tutorials were p good.

Jhonnykiller45 said:

What about the current Inj2 tutorial hub? I don't know how good the tutorials from SG and GG are but I thought the new Injustice 2 tutorials were p good.

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Compared to them, NRS tutorials are only the very basic, like movements, attacks and such. NRS tutorials don't have what SG and GG games do. The advanced tutorials, like the punish, the reflect, the hitconfirm, the hitblock, the blockstrings, etc. This would help the goddamn scrubs to finally play seriously.

If you do the advanced stuff to get used to them, you'd want to do them thrice to pass each tutorial. This is known from GG. And if you want to understand it thoroughly, there's the SG tutorial with the long text explaining this.

I'd not go compare the DBFZ tutorials to anything, because they're a mess. The problem is that the tutorials have always the battle mode in their end. I hope they bring back their form to GGXrd's form in the future.

Be hidden to other charater in online matches to settle down counter picks. Like sf4

Tanno said:

Compared to them, NRS tutorials are only the very basic, like movements, attacks and such. NRS tutorials don't have what SG and GG games do. The advanced tutorials, like the punish, the reflect, the hitconfirm, the hitblock, the blockstrings, etc. This would help the goddamn scrubs to finally play seriously.

If you do the advanced stuff to get used to them, you'd want to do them thrice to pass each tutorial. This is known from GG. And if you want to understand it thoroughly, there's the SG tutorial with the long text explaining this.

I'd not go compare the DBFZ tutorials to anything, because they're a mess. The problem is that the tutorials have always the battle mode in their end. I hope they bring back their form to GGXrd's form in the future.

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I'm talking about the new Injustice 2 tutorial. Did you see it? It's close to what you're describing. Unless that's what you're referring to.

I'm not sure this is so much engine stuff but I'm no expert so I don't mind anyway. Onwards..

I agree with basically all of this for IJ2. The only real controversial one I saw was anti-airs/jump attacks but I am in the boat where some characters should have bad (Well, "Below average") anti-airs while others have extremely strong ones.

I think it's less of a case of "Bad anti-airs" and more some characters have really ridiculous jump ins which make it impossible to even get a clean anti-air without a trade. Some characters do need better anti-airs for sure, like Cyborg, or at least better air-to-airs similar to Superman/Deadshot/Firestorm cases, but I think the bigger problem is that some Jump Attacks are just super bloated in terms of their range, hitbox vs hurtbox collisions, and recovery.

For example, I don't think I've ever seen a character who doesn't have a D2 of a tier of Aquaman (Speed + range), Black Adam (Speed + crouching hurtbox) or someone with an J1 like Superman (5 frames + loads of priority) ever anti-air someone like say Scarecrow's J3. Ridiculous hitbox, covers his whole body basically making it impossible to hit him past his chain, and insane range.

Jhonnykiller45 said:

I'm talking about the new Injustice 2 tutorial. Did you see it? It's close to what you're describing. Unless that's what you're referring to.

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I did, because I dropped the game since last patch that nerfed C.Cold. I ask you to take a look at Skullgirls' tutorial and compare it with INJ2. You'll know what do I mean.

Tanno said:

I did, because I dropped the game since last patch that nerfed C.Cold. I ask you to take a look at Skullgirls' tutorial and compare it with INJ2. You'll know what do I mean.

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Well, I mean, current tutorial doesn't seem any worse than latest GG games or DoA5 have. Or Skullgirls, for that matter, although I don't remember if SG has tactical lessons implemented.

Right now in I2 you have 4 long-ass basic courses, about 25 lessons about "advanced mechanics" and 25 more for "gameplay tactics" like mixups, moving against projectiles etc. Plus some related trials. Maybe something else, don't remember right now.

The only thing it lacks is GG's in-character voiceover, although I'm not sure if it's really worth it.

What NRS games really need is a few more options in training mode, mostly ability to program "manual" reversals better and real-time frame counters like DoA5 and SG have.

Barrogh said:

Well, I mean, current tutorial doesn't seem any worse than latest GG games or DoA5 have. Or Skullgirls, for that matter, although I don't remember if SG has tactical lessons implemented.

Right now in I2 you have 4 long-ass basic courses, about 25 lessons about "advanced mechanics" and 25 more for "gameplay tactics" like mixups, moving against projectiles etc. Plus some related trials. Maybe something else, don't remember right now.

The only thing it lacks is GG's in-character voiceover, although I'm not sure if it's really worth it.

What NRS games really need is a few more options in training mode, mostly ability to program "manual" reversals better and real-time frame counters like DoA5 and SG have.

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I understand.

SG has some tactical lessons, like mixup block, hit confirm, etc. Same goes for GG. Dunno about BBTag, because I have never played this game. I remember them in the tutorials and usually in the trials (combo challenges).

TBH, the only tactical lesson from SG that I didn't get at all are the reflect and the counter tech, which the latter is what I was told from a veteran SG player.

I remember that SF EX Plus Alpha (PSX) had a trial that involved a tactical lesson against the zoning, and it was about that dude with the baseball bat.

Dragonball has some tactical lessons hidden from the whole game, such as Hit's TimeSkip countering and teleporting around his opponent.

I don't remember that INJ2 have this yet. Same goes for MKX. I hope that NRS finally implements this, so that any scrub can at last git gud. INJ2 introduced only the basic mechanism stuff and every character's powers and basic combo strings. There was no advanced stuff in there.

I bought UNIST and Punch Planet (dunno if it has some tutorials, but I feel it's like SG, judging by its gameplay video) and will play them the next days. I wanna see how their tutorials fare over there for a new game.

Tanno said:

I don't remember that INJ2 have this yet. Same goes for MKX. I hope that NRS finally implements this, so that any scrub can at last git gud. INJ2 introduced only the basic mechanism stuff and every character's powers and basic combo strings. There was no advanced stuff in there.

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I mean, dude, they just made exactly that in the last patch (or the one just before it). Which is what I described in my previous post. Others said it too.

On a side note, I don't think that "scrubs will git gud" now. NRS FG series are 7 years old now, people who wanted to learn have finally learned to the extent they wanted to. I remember what online looked like in MK9 (mustard race here, so it was 2013 for me) and I dare say Injustice 2 was completely different. While most people are still simple amateurs, myself included, it's not "most people know only buttons f, u, d2" anymore.

New tutorials will help new players though, but overall I'd say playerbase seems stabilized by now.

It's a pity that the 'advanced tutorial' only applies to batman.. I wish they could make a combo and trial challenge. Were the players could share their findings on their main characters and challenge other people to do what They do. ALA mario maker. For example. people could upload a sequence or a combo and if it's hard to do the people gets rewarded with a mother box for completing it. Allow people to make comments on the tech.. with a pool. If this is useful ect.

neveradestroyer said:

It's a pity that the 'advanced tutorial' only applies to batman.. I wish they could make a combo and trial challenge. Were the players could share their findings on their main characters and challenge other people to do what They do. ALA mario maker. For example. people could upload a sequence or a combo and if it's hard to do the people gets rewarded with a mother box for completing it. Allow people to make comments on the tech.. with a pool. If this is useful ect.

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I like the challenges and the trials, because they help me improve myself with my muscle memory. If it wasn't for Skullgirls' trials, I'd not be good at cancelling any air combo with ADC (Air Dash Cancel). What's more. The trials help with understanding the characters even better.

Despite some obvious problems concerning some variations, which was inevitable, i thought people liked the variation system overall, i know i did.

Slymind said:

Despite some obvious problems concerning some variations, which was inevitable, i thought people liked the variation system overall, i know i did.

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Nope

just_2swift said:

Nope

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I recall some polls in this forum, asking about the variation system, and the majority seemed to be almost always in favor of it.

Opinion on variations will definitely vary depending on what person thinks would be an alternative.

For example, being a fan of toolbox characters (those with shit ton of different moves and their strength being in adaptability) with weird mechanics, I've seen variations as something that stands in the way of having such characters in the game ("hurr durr, they split moves between variations").

Others could see various problems coming from having said characters, for example. Or, on the other note, maybe found a choice of style to be inherently fun.

Slymind said:

I recall some polls in this forum, asking about the variation system, and the majority seemed to be almost always in favor of it.

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pretty sure it was the other way around, i mean, a good chuck was in favor but the other good chuck was also against it, but definitely not a 50-50.

I said I would try Under Night In-Birth Exe Late [st], and I did it. Going throughg the tutorials. I have never met such thoroughly detailed and mid-training tutorials that let us try something out more to get used to it. Its minus is the lack of demonstration.

There were some things that were a bit hard to understand, because the demonstration is lacking there, so I had to figure out how to do them, like the Moving Throws (similar to how as GM SZ put the point zero IK in corner, and then run to throw them back to the IK to freeze).

Half of this game has 50 50 monsters (hellboy, flash, canary, cold, brainiac enchantress, firestorm, darkseid, cheetah etc)

Also this games anti airs still need work . Fate, robin, starfire, manta, wowo j3 for instance just jump for free. Not sure if that has anything to do with the engine but i hope mk11 has solid aas with minimal wacky jump ins. Doing j3 into j3 into j3 because u cant get aa'ed is an ugly thing to look at.

SylverRye said:

Half of this game has 50 50 monsters (hellboy, flash, canary, cold, brainiac enchantress, firestorm, darkseid, cheetah etc)

Also this games anti airs still need work . Fate, robin, starfire, manta, wowo j3 for instance just jump for free. Not sure if that has anything to do with the engine but i hope mk11 has solid aas with minimal wacky jump ins. Doing j3 into j3 into j3 because u cant get aa'ed is an ugly thing to look at.

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I think this is the first comment I've seen of IJ2 having too many 50/50 characters

Cursa said:

I think this is the first comment I've seen of IJ2 having too many 50/50 characters

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I dunno why people dont realize this lol. There are mad 50 50 chars in this game.

SylverRye said:

I dunno why people dont realize this lol. There are mad 50 50 chars in this game.

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There are a lot of 50/50 characters in this game, most of them are pretty tame compared to MKX though so I don't think a lot of people really notice, or they just gloss over it cause the only one thats a real problem is Flash

I like to separate characters like Cold,Red Hood, Enchantress, or the such from characters like Flash. One can mix you after landing a knockdown but don't have any raw 50/50s.

IJ2 is far tamer than MKX imo when it comes to 50/50s