Custom Variations UI Redesign ( Pictures )

[OnlineSkunk]

Hi, I'm just making this thread with the hope NRS can see it and reconsider their decision on having preset variations for tournaments and ranked matches.

Game informer article says "that degree of customization creates some issues when it comes to ranked and especially local tournament play"

I don't believe this would be the case if they change the user interface.

Even hidden select would be possible if you know where your character abilities are and I'm sure NRS would come up with a better design than this.

Screen could look like this if player one chose to go to back to character select screen. ( In tournament mode )

Abilities Only Hidden Select. Online matches should give you the option to hide the characters / abilities select screen to your opponent only.

 

[pure.Wasted]

OK so I assume this is going to sound like blasphemy to a lot of people here, but I have to ask:

Why does your opponent need to see what moves you picked...?

At all...? Ever...?

When a CS:GO round starts, you don't know what guns the enemy players bought, or what armor, or what accessories. As the round continues, you don't know which T is carrying the bomb, or which CT traded out his m16 for an AK from a fallen Terrorist, or whether the asshole trying to ambush you picked up a flashbang somewhere in the last 30 seconds. You encounter these things in the game as it happens, and you improvise to the best of your ability. And if the enemy players improvise better, you lose.

I spent years following the (massively successful) esports scenes of other games before taking so much as a look at any fighters, and in literally every single esport I've ever seen, both competitive players (on ladder) and pros (in tournaments) are:

1) expected to IMPROVISE when their opponents make "customization" options mid-match, e.g. changing their weapons (in FPS games), changing their characters (in hero shooters), or changing their strategies wildly (in RTS games)

and 2) expected to make educated guesses about, and keep track of, a fuck ton of information that is rarely if ever on screen

I can't help but think that compared to all other esports players and pros, fighting game players are babied with how much information they're given. And the result of this insistence on perfect information is a lower skill ceiling, a lower skill gap between different players, a lower variety of different skillsets that are rewarded by the game (which means that pros have limited avenues to distinguish themselves from one another), and less excitement for spectators because they're robbed of a lot of potentially dramatic and exciting moments.

Not only am I for custom variations, I don't even think players should be able to see one another's loadouts. You'll know what their loadout is when you see it in action.

 

[LDA_DIgi]

Onlineskunk: beautiful. Hope nrs takes notes to something so simple and greatly requested.

Pure.wasted: regardless of what i just said above, you are 100% correct. And all the more why i truly believe custom variations should be tournament legal regardless if we get the added UI's or not.

Ultimately the reason why players want it is for convenience.

They want to look at a character or variation title at the vs. Screen and know what they are getting themselves into before the match starts. Thats the common denominator that all fighting games have.

 

[DarkSado]

Bro this is a fighting game not a first person shooter your example is far off lol

 

[Kiss the Missile]

You should def be able to see your opponent's moves at some point. You don't want to fight a Kabal who keeps his loadout a secret only to pull a surprise 30% Low Hook Krushing blow out of his ass in the final round.

 

[Sage Leviathan]

@pure.Wasted
Moves may as well have been hidden like that in the stress test/beta. My opponents and I often selected our characters so fast that we couldn't see the little pictures (which give away the moves our variations were made of).

 

[Sage Leviathan]

You should def be able to see your opponent's moves at some point. You don't want to fight a Kabal who keeps his loadout a secret only to pull a surprise 30% Low Hook Krushing blow out of his ass in the final round.

To be fair, if Kabal can weaken you to 30% in round 3 with what is essentially a wasted slot and then win with a surprise low hook KB, that's less of a "variation moves shouldn't be hidden" problem and more of a "Kabal's low hook KB shouldn't do 27%" problem.

 

[Spinky]

I've also seen this floating around.

I know it would probably take a while, but man, I pray they consider something like this.

 

[Scyther]

OK so I assume this is going to sound like blasphemy to a lot of people here, but I have to ask:

Why does your opponent need to see what moves you picked...?

At all...? Ever...?

When a CS:GO round starts, you don't know what guns the enemy players bought, or what armor, or what accessories. As the round continues, you don't know which T is carrying the bomb, or which CT traded out his m16 for an AK from a fallen Terrorist, or whether the asshole trying to ambush you picked up a flashbang somewhere in the last 30 seconds. You encounter these things in the game as it happens, and you improvise to the best of your ability. And if the enemy players improvise better, you lose.

You know, that's a really good point. When I played the later Halo games (Halo:Reach, 4, and 5), I never knew what kind of arsenal the enemy was spawning in with. The announcer never called out over the speakers that someone was spawning in with a Fuel Rod or Beam Rifle.

I don't see why MK should be any different just because it's a fighting game vs an FPS. It's like walking up to an opponent and saying "Hey, tell me what moves you plan on performing and when so I can prepare a proper defense beforehand, k thx!" The more and more I think about, the more ridiculous it seems lol

 

[SinkFla]

Hi, I'm just making this thread with the hope NRS can see it and reconsider their decision on having preset variations for tournaments and ranked matches.

Game informer article says "that degree of customization creates some issues when it comes to ranked and especially local tournament play"

I don't believe this would be the case if they change the user interface.

Even hidden select would be possible if you know where your character abilities are and I'm sure NRS would come up with a better design than this.

Absolutely beautiful and almost 1:1 for what I had envisioned. Good work man! Only thing I would add is that on the loading screen before the match, a prompt requiring BOTH players to press X/A to confirm and continue into the match (just so people can look at the abilities as long as they need to). Now imagine if each one of those rectangular ability identifiers were animated!

This really needs as much visibility as possible.

 

[SaSSolino]

This is perfect. Good job mate. Let's hope NRS sees this.

 

[DDustiNN]

This is exactly what I’ve been asking for since the reveal day.

 

[Vslayer]

Being able to pick your moves on the select screen for tournament or online ranked makes a whole lotta sense, now I have to agree with a lot of people on the fact that you don't need to see what specials your opponent is using. Adapt to the situation. If you know the MU, then coming up with a gameplan doesn't require a masters in engineering.

 

[trufenix]

Now we're building it for them in mock screen shots, yeesh.

 

[John Grizzly]

I think a simple bit of text below the variation name would be more than enough info for your opponent.

So.......

Boon's Main
Misery Blade/Demon Dash

I don't think the above looks bad at all.

 

[Obly]

Good concept and nice work. But I think you're missing the point. The biggest problem with custom variations and tournament play isn't an inefficient UI. It's about balance, balance, balance.

No matter how hard NRS tries or how much they patch, they'll never achieve perfect balance across characters and their potential movesets. There will always be some combinations that are OP and some that are crap. How long do you think it will take competitive players to figure out which is which? You allow custom loadouts in tournies and you're guaranteed to see the same small handful get played again and again. Folks who are screaming the loudest about all this have apparently already forgotten the age of Deadshot mirror matches ad nauseum.

Using fixed variations is NRS's extra level of balance, because they can disallow the most OP combinations, and better ensure the available choices are reasonably well-matched. Might not seem "fair" to the people screaming right now, but it will be much better for us as spectators because we'll actually get some variety in the matches we see.

 

[Obly]

Why does your opponent need to see what moves you picked...?

At all...? Ever...?

Because a fighting game is not like a FPS. The highest level of play is the 1-on-1 mind game between the two players. That gets completely disrupted if they start a match not even knowing what moves the other player is capable of.

You might say, well, they should improvise on the fly. Ok sure, but if you're looking to watch a fast, dynamic, hype match between pros, I guarantee you'd get the opposite. Every match would start out very slow and conservative while the players try to bait each other into showing their moves. The match would be half over before they actually started to play. It would be dreadfully monotonous for spectators and the players alike.

 

[TheJaquio]

Good concept and nice work. But I think you're missing the point. The biggest problem with custom variations and tournament play isn't an inefficient UI. It's about balance, balance, balance.

No matter how hard NRS tries or how much they patch, they'll never achieve perfect balance across characters and their potential movesets. There will always be some combinations that are OP and some that are crap. How long do you think it will take competitive players to figure out which is which? You allow custom loadouts in tournies and you're guaranteed to see the same small handful get played again and again. Folks who are screaming the loudest about all this have apparently already forgotten the age of Deadshot mirror matches ad nauseum.

Using fixed variations is NRS's extra level of balance, because they can disallow the most OP combinations, and better ensure the available choices are reasonably well-matched. Might not seem "fair" to the people screaming right now, but it will be much better for us as spectators because we'll actually get some variety in the matches we see.

If custom variations added enough variety to just see even TWO variations per character in Tournament regularly, that would one more than you'd see in an MKX-style preset system.

As it stands now, they want to feature every special move in a preset. With the 2-4 presets they've thrown out there as a number, that means each special will only be represented once. Which means, for example, you will only ever see whichever Scorpion preset has Misery Blade in tournament, and it will always be paired up with the same special because it's a preset. Meanwhile, with custom variations yeah you'd see Misery Blade all the time, but the other special would likely change a lot, adding more variety.

As another example, with presets you will only ever see Gutted Baraka. Now, Baraka does have other custom options that compete in effectiveness with that one move (grab+leg kebab for example), but they are only equally as effective if bundled together. If those two moves are in separate presets, then you will only ever see Gutted.

I don't see why people say it can't be balanced either. Is Kabal too powerful because he can get big combo damage with hook grab, combo'd into a restand which then sets up for a free 50/50? Fine, then just make hook grab a 2-point move. Now he can only have either combo damage plus restand, OR combo damage plus 50/50s. Still don't like that? Fine, make restand and low hook incompatible, so that he can't restand you into a free 50/50. The argument that it can't be balanced is entirely invalid.

 

[Jeffrey Wolf]

Great reply @TheJaquio. I don't know how anyone can say that Presets will be better balanced after MKX. MKX is proof that NRS can't balance presets/variations. Anyone who played MKX competitively could name plenty of variations that never saw the light of day. Ever see a high level Unbreakable Sub? Of course not, because he was never viable until, maybe, the last patch. We saw Blood God once because of Tekken Master, and many others never got a chance. If the moves of Unbreakable or Blood God or Lasher or Warrior or High Tech or any other unusable variation had been split, then we might have actually seen some totems, or parries, or air smack downs combined with tournament viable variations, thus increasing playing and viewing variance and excitement.

And this is even without addressing that variations made some characters completely unplayable at a high level because none of them combined the moves that were needed to make the character measure up to others. This will be especially true in MK11 where there are certain moves that will obviously be included in every build or will severely weaken the character--potentially, to unplayability--if they aren't part of the presets. This is due in part to the limited combo system, as well as limited universal combo and string enders. Because of this, of course you will see everyone take moves that make their strings safe on block (Scorpion's Misery Blade), end combos for extra damage (Skarlet's Cell Siphon), or extend combos (Kabal's Air Grab or Baraka's Gutted). However, as has been said, with Kustom over Preset, we'll see those moves with something else. If Presets rock, due to the design of this game, ironically, it will be the least custom game ever, where we will likely only ever see one Preset used, if the character is even usable.

So, to those harping on "balance" please take a look back at MKX and realize that Presets are definitively not the way to go if that is what you want. Even if NRS foolishly decides to stick with Presets, it will make this conversation much easier and more honest.

P.S. Great work @OnlineSkunk. Hopefully, the devs will see it, and all the other backlash, and make a change.

 

[DarkSado]

You know, that's a really good point. When I played the later Halo games (Halo:Reach, 4, and 5), I never knew what kind of arsenal the enemy was spawning in with. The announcer never called out over the speakers that someone was spawning in with a Fuel Rod or Beam Rifle.

I don't see why MK should be any different just because it's a fighting game vs an FPS. It's like walking up to an opponent and saying "Hey, tell me what moves you plan on performing and when so I can prepare a proper defense beforehand, k thx!" The more and more I think about, the more ridiculous it seems lol

bro that is the worst comparison ever.

 

[OnlineSkunk]

I've also seen this floating around.

I know it would probably take a while, but man, I pray they consider something like this.

Looks really nice, they can also grey out abilities that conflict with each other and auto select the ones that requires each other.

 

[DarkSado]

If custome variation was allowe people would do same thing in mkx they would just pick the best moves like misery blade scrop.

 

[Scyther]

bro that is the worst comparison ever.

Care to elaborate? Or no?

 

[Law Hero]

Very nicely done. I particularly like seeing the moves during the loading screen.

I feel like the difficult part is not designing the UI, but being able to code/implement it instead. It would be nice if when the eventual Ultimate version comes, they manage to do something like this. Would really change things up competitively and could breathe some new life into the game.

 

[Scyther]

Because a fighting game is not like a FPS. The highest level of play is the 1-on-1 mind game between the two players. That gets completely disrupted if they start a match not even knowing what moves the other player is capable of.

You might say, well, they should improvise on the fly. Ok sure, but if you're looking to watch a fast, dynamic, hype match between pros, I guarantee you'd get the opposite. Every match would start out very slow and conservative while the players try to bait each other into showing their moves. The match would be half over before they actually started to play. It would be dreadfully monotonous for spectators and the players alike.

...sounds like how a real fight between two mythical fighters might actually start...

Also, with each player counterpicking the counterpick of their opponent's counterpick since the last counterpick, it sounds like such a match is already half over...and monotonous to boot.

To be fair, I'm not a tournament player. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like to truly show off one's competitive skills, a player would be required to show some on-the-fly adaptation skills and not simply selecting custom abilities, seeing what their opponent has picked, de-selecting their previous choices to better counter their opponent, wait for their opponent to de-select the choices they just made to better counter the other player, and so forth and so forth.