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Why is Injustice 2's meta considered stale?

Cursa

Counterpoke with armoured DB2 at all times.
I think different people also have different tastes left in their mouth after the first couple of months of IJ2.

Like I played against my fair share of Aquamen, Black Adam's and Deadshots. (Buffed SG was the top tier I ran into extremely often) but my first "proper" games against someone of a similar skill level to me was against a Flash player.

We found each other in player matches when I was still maining Robin and he was a really good Flash. But we both were still figuring out the kinks of our own and each others characters. Like I was consistently doing wakeup BF3's and he didn't know how to punish them correctly and I didn't know how to punish his lightning kick on block, stuff like that. Figuring out how to beat the F3 Flash cross up and controlling the neutral using Robin's buttons, trait, and DB1 to try and contest with Flash's insane 50/50 and damage potential.

That was probably the most fun I had playing the game. We'd always run into each other in ranked and it was basically always 3-2 to one of us, usually with a lot of impressive comebacks based on just hard reads and rarely through just pure rushdown or zoning, it was always a hard fought neutral battle in order to get our set play started.

And eventually I went from "learning how to punish lightning kick" to "learning how to exploit MB stomp gaps, delayed lightning kick, lighting kick cancels, RMS staggers" etc. And he went from "punishing BF3" to "How do I deal with reversal meterless armoured 50/50's"

I think matchups like that were kinda scarce, and still are to an extent. That's why I ended up picking up Bane and Atom - They force interesting games. They are both characters that require you to change your gameplan - Bane forces rushdown players to be careful of armoured 50/50 reversals, understanding their plus frames etc. While Atom forces zoners to understand how trading works, enforcing good trades in zoning wars, being careful of teleport/trait mobility...

I think a lot of people missed out on that by leaving the game early due to a poor beginning.
 
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Barrogh

Meta saltmine
If you're a casual it is more exciting, which are the loudest voice in the room if we're talking about gameplay enjoyment. The people who post "Raiden is op" threads based on watching his first gameplay stream, and the ones who think that IJ2 matchup charts are filled with 8-2's because "My character gets spammed out the entire game"

The people who complain the most are the ones that create the stigma that Injustice 2 is boring and that MKX was the greatest fighting game of all time.
Makes me wonder how many layers of who people call "casuals" really is. I'd say I'm as casual as it gets, but I enjoy learning my games at least to an extent that I understand what's going on and how to make things happen. On the other hand, I was too lazy for a lot of things in MKX. So I suppose people who liked MKX must be less "casual" than me, heh.

Granted, how lazy you are to give your effort for something is inversely proportional to how much you like the thing in question, so maybe that's that :D
 

Cursa

Counterpoke with armoured DB2 at all times.
Makes me wonder how many layers of who people call "casuals" really is. I'd say I'm as casual as it gets, but I enjoy learning my games at least to an extent that I understand what's going on and how to make things happen. On the other hand, I was too lazy for a lot of things in MKX. So I suppose people who liked MKX must be less "casual" than me, heh.

Granted, how lazy you are to give your effort for something is inversely proportional to how much you like the thing in question, so maybe that's that :D
I call "casual" people who don't commit to the game and just play for the lolz. Not really much labbing into frame data or anything

They're a good thing to have for a certain amount of time. 'Casuals' make up a good percent of the population, so if they don't find it interesting, you're missing out on a lot of $$$ I think
 

trufenix

bye felicia
I think its an unfortunate and growing misconception that a "casual" is some fundamentally different players than "the scene". I think the term needs to go.

I think if "casual" is really /everyone/ outside of the real competitive scene, then the scene is really just a couple hundred guys. World wide. There's still a solid 5 or 6 million of us who turn up in the sales figure for every game, without fail. You can't just dismiss them all as casuals who don't play for real, that's like 99% of the games fanbase.

I sincerely doubt thats how NRS or WB looks at it.
 

Cursa

Counterpoke with armoured DB2 at all times.
I think its an unfortunate and growing misconception that a "casual" is some fundamentally different players than "the scene". I think the term needs to go.

I think if "casual" is really /everyone/ outside of the real competitive scene, then the scene is really just a couple hundred guys. World wide. There's still a solid 5 or 6 million of us who turn up in the sales figure for every game, without fail. You can't just dismiss them all as casuals who don't play for real, that's like 99% of the games fanbase.

I sincerely doubt thats how NRS or WB looks at it.
Again, I'm not saying it as an insult or anything.

If anything, casuals are the most important group for a game's life. They are the largest group and make up a bulk of the sales, and they go tell their friends "Hey man pick up this game so we can play against each other" or "don't do it this shit hot trash my dude". Basically for every 1 person who buys a game there's a chance that he/she will go tell X amount of people to buy it. I won't go into that whole business shenanigan cause it's boring and doesn't have much to do with IJ2's meta but yea, onwards.

I'll take your example - Say IJ2 had exactly 6 million players pick up the game on day 1. Now, it's all theory, but how many of them do you think actually enjoyed playing against characters like Fate, Deadshot, or Cyborg? Not too mention characters who aren't even zoners yet were still really dumb and super easy to pick up, like Aquaman, Black Adam, or Superman? Then the next question after that is - After, say, a year (So about now), out of that same 6 million players, not including any people who've bought the game between now and then, how many of them are still playing Injustice 2? And actually having fun? I'm not expert but I would be confident in saying it's below 30% personally, at least from the people that I speak too.

This post is going really back and forth because I'm kinda hungover and only just woke up, but basically, it's not fun for "casual" players to play Injustice 2's meta. It's just a newcomer-unfriendly, noob-unfriendly, people who have shorter schedules don't have time to learn the game, casual players don't find it fun to see someone shoot projectiles on a 2D plane.

If you're a person who fits into one of the above categories (Surprise, it's a lot of people who bought IJ2), then they, in probably about 60-90% of cases, dropped the game like a sack of bricks. For example all my real life friends bought it and didn't play it as much as I do. They would go into a game and have to fight against someone like top 1 Deadshot, and NRS took 6 months to nerf him, you think they stuck around for all 6 of those months? Hell no, it's boring to play against and watch, hell it was boring for ME to fight against and I actually knew proper counterpicks and gaps in DS's strings/zoning to help me get past it. And I'm an optimist so I tried my best to enjoy it.

So I went back and did some comment reading, and basically to tldr this whole thing (Might have more to discuss if people want more of an explanation from me);
Granted, how lazy you are to give your effort for something is inversely proportional to how much you like the thing in question, so maybe that's that :D
Injustice 2 is a harder game to learn than MKX for the record (Meta wise, not talking about execution, that comes second). It also doesn't help that for the longest time the best characters in Injustice and the ones you see the most in ranked are all really easy characters to play. Superman. Black Adam. Fate. Starfire. Deadshot (No longer best but was). Aquaman.
 

Cursa

Counterpoke with armoured DB2 at all times.
Also have to remember that fighting games in themselves are quite time consuming to pick up initially, FPS and RPG's come quite naturally to most people, it's motor control, moving the R3/mouse moves your character's view, L3/WASD moves you in that direction. Most other game's have effective tutorials to help you play, which FG's have but they're really hard to do well. IJ2's is the best I've seen and it still leaves a lot out.

I feel like I've said this but FPS', eventually your reactions will get better. Your motor control will get better. You'll figure out the gun's recoil and control accordingly.

Fighting games... You don't really learn them the same way. You can, but it's probably not the ideal way. Like if all I do is play ranked (No lab) all the time I'm probably never going to learn my characters' best tools or optimals. You have to go out of your way to learn those. Which some people aren't willing to do, and as a result, find the genre boring and move on.
 

Gooberking

FGC Cannon Fodder
Also have to remember that fighting games in themselves are quite time consuming to pick up initially, FPS and RPG's come quite naturally to most people, it's motor control, moving the R3/mouse moves your character's view, L3/WASD moves you in that direction. Most other game's have effective tutorials to help you play, which FG's have but they're really hard to do well. IJ2's is the best I've seen and it still leaves a lot out.

I feel like I've said this but FPS', eventually your reactions will get better. Your motor control will get better. You'll figure out the gun's recoil and control accordingly.

Fighting games... You don't really learn them the same way. You can, but it's probably not the ideal way. Like if all I do is play ranked (No lab) all the time I'm probably never going to learn my characters' best tools or optimals. You have to go out of your way to learn those. Which some people aren't willing to do, and as a result, find the genre boring and move on.
I basically have no life and do nothing but play FGs in my copious amounts of free time. I have yet to find enough time to play half of the games I want to and have never been better at a game than meh. It's a lot of time, work, and memorization. Most people are better at it than I am, but you really have to want to do it to get anywhere with a FG. Most people have something they are willing to work for, but most don't really have time or interest in more than one big thing in life. Being really good at FGs is probably not something a lot of people feel a need for, and not a common "big thing" people invest in.

IJ2 specifically feels more uneven across the skill ladder than a lot of other fighters. Maybe I'm full of it, but it seems like the game has a lot of easy to create, hard to overcome stuff in it that requires a better than average FG understanding to negate. I don't think that is really a meta problem (which is probably fine) and more of an on-boarding and retention problem with the low to mid skill layers. I don't know that IJ2 is really flawed for any of that, but I got to think there are better fighters for low to mid / "casual" skill level play.

That said, people are still playing the thing, and they built a lot of stuff into the game to try and give regulars something to enjoy, so it's hard to really say it's not working unless we could see stats on it and other fighters.
 

Stanlos

Noob
I don't think its an issue with the game. The issue is that people have become such tier whores that I am always fighting against the character of the moment. Aquamans, Batmans, Supergirls now firestorms. I barely get to play against other characters. We never see other good characters either because people are always listening to who the top players say are the new top tiers in order to hop on the bandwagon and we get more of the same.
Does NRS design winners/losers/tiers into the game? They design some characters to reek and others not to reek?
 

Cursa

Counterpoke with armoured DB2 at all times.
But aren't those made by NRS?
Yes but in order to prevent a tier list from existing it would mean that every character in the game would have to be equally adept at the game and every character would have to go 5-5 with everyone else.

Pretty hard work. I don't see how you'd make Raiden and Starfire on the same level of balance
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
Yes but in order to prevent a tier list from existing it would mean that every character in the game would have to be equally adept at the game and every character would have to go 5-5 with everyone else.

Pretty hard work. I don't see how you'd make Raiden and Starfire on the same level of balance
Any character can be strong enough if changed to be that. Raiden was the strongest character in MKX for a point
 

Cursa

Counterpoke with armoured DB2 at all times.
Any character can be strong enough if changed to be that. Raiden was the strongest character in MKX for a point
Yeah I'm just saying it takes a shit load of time and effort to do it for the whole cast and isn't straightforward for every character.
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
IJ2 specifically feels more uneven across the skill ladder than a lot of other fighters. Maybe I'm full of it, but it seems like the game has a lot of easy to create, hard to overcome stuff in it that requires a better than average FG understanding to negate. I don't think that is really a meta problem (which is probably fine) and more of an on-boarding and retention problem with the low to mid skill layers. I don't know that IJ2 is really flawed for any of that, but I got to think there are better fighters for low to mid / "casual" skill level play.
I think one of the cool things about NRS games competitively is that they require thinking and labbing hard and your options to deal with stuff isn't as freeform or samey as it is in other games, answers are often pretty unituitive and character specific. Luckily NRS has an awesome training mode that keeps getting better. Unfortunately, most our community doesn't know how to do this