3 Fight Styles Pros/Cons

[Johnny2d]

MkX: Every Character Gets 3 Versions/Fight Styles

Some people are calling the options their 'trait', although that might not be a great word for it considering trait means something specific in Injustice. It looked more like the style choice allows you access to different specials, or normals, or properties. This sort of option isn't brand new in fighters, it might be like grooves in capcom, or assists I guess, they are options within your character.

Here are the Pros and Cons I've Thought of So far (I'm sure you guys will help me point out more!):

Pro: You can counter pick but keep your main! Having access to different tools will let people find solutions to problems without putting a different character on the screen.

Pro: You can tailor your choice to your style. If you want to go in, you pick the option for that. If you want to zone, there's a version for that, etc. All the while you still get your favorite person to play rather than having to play someone you dont like as much.

Pro: If you like finding tech and setups, you have a lot more content to explore within your main.

Pro: This allows for new things to come out in tournaments for people to watch from home. More stuff to discover might equal more surprise in tournaments. Options possibly equals hype.

Con: 3x24...go go gadget math... 72 fighters to balance. Ruh roh. Now, it wont be as bad as 72 completely different fighters, but it still sounds like a lot. Who knows, maybe this is a good way to give the players more content without too much work on the devs. Possibly genius? Possibly a balance nightmare. I think its probably likely that we are all going to find some very broken stuff in the game when it releases... but not to panic, Boon seems committed to balance, and they've proven they can hotfix QUICK, and can patch with logic.

Con: The effort and energy is going into character versions rather than new characters or our favorite old ones. People are going to have to accept that their main from before, might not be in.

Con: This isnt necessarily a bandage for the holes before. Jade for example was fine, her toolset was competitive (IMO), and she could hold her own against most characters. But she can't fight kenshi or smoke because their projectiles don't count as projectiles and that nullifies her core gameplay, going through stuff. If a character at its core has that big of an issue, choosing a different style might not even matter. I hope this isn't smoke and mirrors to make you think you have choices when really there is a fundamental hole in the character design. Jade's got other problems like needing the meter to use her best move, and not building meter, and not having a big punish, but I used the projectile example because against kenshi, there is literally nothing she can do. Who knows, this system could fix most of that if implemented right. (Disclaimer, I love Jade, she is still my number 2, it is what it is)

This is what I've thought about so far. Feel free to add your own. I'm really excited for this system. Even if my mains aren't in, I trust this, it looks amazing. I'll be happy.

What else have people been thinking about with the fight style choices?

 

[SteezyPhresh]

You are filling in a lot of blanks.

 

[OG Mannimal]

We really don't know what the variations will do in total. From what I can tell so far, all the variations do are change special moves. It's too early for this type of thread.

 

[AK Stormthegates]

The 3 styles system has been used before to moderate success. It all comes down to if the characters aren't too strong/too weak as a shell to see if it will matter.

 

[Fred Marvel]

hmm this might come off the wrong way but i dont think the styles will be as diverse as you think, it wont be like 72 charcters. just having different specials or properties to account for with the same character.
looks like a really awesome mechanic though

 

[Johnny2d]

We really don't know what the variations will do in total. From what I can tell so far, all the variations do are change special moves. It's too early for this type of thread.

Haha, probably. It's a speculation thread. I'm excited and was writing in my head anyway so I put it down and shared it. No worries.

 

[REDRUM]

no cons only pros....

pick the style in your mind that gives you the best chance vs opponent (style)

It can only help you settle into your styles and shit

 

[Johnny2d]

hmm this might come off the wrong way but i dont think the styles will be as diverse as you think, it wont be like 72 charcters. just having different specials or properties to account for with the same character.
looks like a really awesome mechanic though

Doesn't come off wrong, I know what you mean. On one end of the spectrum it could be a lot to balance, it might not be much at all, we don't know. The game and what we've seen so far has my imagination racing!

 

[WakeUp DP]

They could work how assist work in umvc3!

 

[VenomX-90]

First thing ppl are gonna try to find is an infinite.

 

[Bildslash]

The only Con: TYM will never agree on a Tier List, specially if there's only a 2 year period to do so.

 

[Circus]

I see no cons

 

[AK Stormthegates]

The only Con: TYM will never agree on a Tier List, specially if there's only a 2 year period to do so.

If they can tier Melty Blood, they can tier this game.

 

[Peckapowa]

one con i feel is it would be cool to have all the moves in one character, but i really think it is cool.

 

[REDRUM]

 

[Bildslash]

If they can tier Melty Blood, they can tier this game.

Maybe their community, but not ours judging from what happened in MK9 and IGAU.

 

[Johnny2d]

one con i feel is it would be cool to have all the moves in one character, but i really think it is cool.

Right? We could add it as a pro/con like this:

Pro: NRS has shown us they are very creative with new concepts, ideas, mechanics, that make the characters awesome and unique to NRS games. Traits in IGAU made way for insane new designs like Bane, Zod, Aquaman, Sinestro... remember: 'You know how to fix Cyrax, make everyone Cyrax!'. so now they have the potential to give everyone sweet broken stuff, crazy ideas times 3.

Con: We will want all of our awesome tools in one version of the character.

 

[KH_Seraph]

I saw Scorpion using those ninja blades in his strings. Those look awesome! Basically makes his block strings have range and safe?

I'm a huge fan of this different approach. I just hope they can put like a "custom style" in there too, but I could see some issues with that.

 

[roosTakk]

This is a pro for me being that I always put ALL of my time into one character

 

[xWildx]

Given this community's absolute LOVE for creating matchup threads for Injustice, MKX should turn the forums into a real shit show.

 

[callMEcrazy]

First thing ppl are gonna try to find is an infinite.

Not really a bad approach. Much better than being introduced to it by your opponent.

 

[CrazySlasher]

II'm excited to not have to switch around characters for certain match-ups.

 

[AZ MotherBrain]

Cons? No cons.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

Question: What will be the tournament ruling for this? I believe in SF4, you can change Ultras even after a win but you have to pick your Ultra first before the opponent picks his character.

Is that correct and will this be the same?

 

[Eji1700]

It's all going to hinge on how serious they take this . 72x72 matchup charts are a fucking nightmare in any game, and most games with rosters/options like that only have a few options-

1. Fuck balance and hope(the mvc2 approach). I doubt they'll get that lucky, and in this day and age you aren't going to get the kind of dedication MvC2 got to find out that "yeah theres a real game hidden behind all the trash picks"

2. Limit the differences, which they don't seem to be doing much of. Hellfire scorp seems pretty drastically different from the other scrop. Obviously they'll all share some "core" idea, but if they're going to be that different they'll essentially need to be considered new characters for balance purposes.

3. Accept the differences. Essentially the idea that no character should have a 9-1 matchup across all 3 styles vs ANY other character/style combination, but may have one or two styles that do. So hellfire scorp has a few 9-1 matchups, but all of those are at least viable with sword scorp, who maybe has 9-1 matchups elsewhere. This leads to character picking issues however.

4. False choices. More hardcore version of the above. Basically they just balance assuming a 24 character roster, and assume that each character has a "real" style which they do all their balance around, and then make sure the other styles are inferior enough to not screw that up. Safe, but obviously heavily flawed and probably eat some backlash.

The one thing they've got going for them is they sorta seem to handle balance patching responsibly. I'm not going to say MK9 or Injustice were even close to perfect, but they are receptive to the idea of balance patches. How often games like this should be patched is something you could argue to the end of time(they did seem to overreact to non issue stuff, and then leave serious issues stuff like Kabal) but one very realistic option is to get the game playable through beta testing, and then do a sort of gamma test(stupid name I know) which is basically just taking serious notes for the first 3 months. No matter how good your Q&A and beta testers are, 3-4 months of REAL play with thousands to millions of casuals + tournaments is going to show you more about your game than you ever knew, and if they're smart they'll learn from it and do one big "final polish" patch at the end of 3 or so months(barring "fix now" issues)