[Discussion] "This character is super easy to use"

[PLAYING TO WIN]

The goal of this thread is to discuss an ongoing debate about execution barriers and what it will mean to a game. Considering depth, counter pick meta, ease of use, execution level of characters and game play mechanics can have a tremendous effect on an individual's investment in a title or the longevity of said game. In recent kombat kasts and character reveals, 16 bit explicitly stated "This character is excellent for beginners and easy to use. We want it to be more about the decision making instead of execution" This mentality surely makes the game more approachable to new/casual players but it has a detrimental effect on the games longevity.

In recent discussions with @THTB and @General M2Dave this topic came up again. A few major points:

• Making characters easy to use caters to a counter pick meta. You can possible have a Deadshot situation where a top 3 character can be learned in 3 days at the highest level.

• If an "easy to use" character is top 5 there is a good chance you will see a top player beat another top player's main in top 8 with a pocket super easy to use top tier. I2 examples are prepatch deadshot and starfire. A notible example is whiteboi's week old deadshot beating bdon's dr fate.

• Creating "easy to use" characters will likely result in characters who lack depth. A huge talking point in i2's competitive circle was that people were extremely bored with the game. I would hear and agree with comments like "In mkx or i1 I would be able to lab for hours and hours two years into the game and I was still finding stuff with my main" There was very little player personality that could come out through the majority of the cast in i2. By personality I mean destroyer's predator or sako's menat or reo's kabal or deoxy beetle et cetera.

• Execution is vital in keeping rampant counter picking in check. Imagine if MK9 kabal nomad cancels were super easy, zod i2 ia balls, mkx predator, d'vorah or cage cancels et ceteral. It required much more of an investment from players leading to increased game satisfaction when they starting winning. Thinking about notable and respected games, very few of them lacked what injustice 2 did. Many injustice 2 pro's had 3-5 top 8 viable characters or a character that specifically matched up well vs another player's main. Do you see this happening in SF4/5? Guilty Gear? Smash? KOF? UMVC3? Tekkan? Aside from very few examples such as infiltration, no, it was not the case.

• If we want a game that will last more than two years it will have to have much more depth than i2 and things that require more player investment.

• can you have depth and execution and still appeal to a casual base? sf5 does. Activate Urien's aegis and you have 100's of options. Menat... insane depth and variability. UMVC3 did. Smash ultimate does. Tekkan now does. So I think the answer is yes, what do you think?

Anyways I thought it was a good discussion and it also highlights some of my conditioned fear going from I2 to mk11 after hearing 16 bit say every character is super easy to use in every reveal. Also, I thought MB moves in MK11 being different inputs was a good thing bc it would have added to the games execution barrier and may have had a minor effect on players ability to counter pick. It was a step in the right direction anyways.

 

[STB Sgt Reed]

blah blah blah.

Execution shouldn't be the skill barrier. It should be your reads, knowledge of punishes/combos, situational awareness, spacing, etc.

Not whether you can roll your thumb in two 360 rotations while mashing both bumpers and slapping your ass.

 

[Marlow]

IDK, I thought Injustice 2 had plenty of depth, it just didn't have as big a scene as MK, so there simply wasn't the same push that a game like MKX had. I think MK11 will be fine.

 

[Vslayer]

Using a character that is execution heavy that you're good at, or using an 'easy' character that you know just as well won't make a difference at all.

There have always been 'easy' characters in games. Take Batman in IJ2. If the player doesn't know him well, they will still lose regardless. It has a lot to do with the player's skill, not the character itself.

 

[BecomingDeath13]

Not whether you can roll your thumb in two 360 rotations while mashing both bumpers and slapping your ass.

I'd pay to see that

 

[Marlow]

The main thing I'm hoping for is a good balance. Have some characters that are less execution heavy, but also include some characters that are execution heavy.

 

[Law Hero]

While I don't doubt that NRS wants to make many characters easier to use, I think you can expect to hear "this character is easy to use" on every single kombat kast, because tournament players really aren't the target audience. The majority of the tens of thousands of people watching want to hear that they can pick up and play easily. Saying a character is difficult to use during the cast is gonna be a huge turnoff for the majority of watchers. I don't think we'll know how easy or difficult any character is to use until we get our hands on the game.

 

[BecomingDeath13]

You have to think like this too. At the end of the day, they're trying to sell copies. If a character looks dope and they tell you that character is easy to use they'll nudge you closer to that preorder (whether the character is actually easy to use or not).

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Every fighting game has characters that are easy to use (Ryu) and characters that are not (SF4 Viper). Just because a character is easy to understand and execute with (Ryu) does not mean that it is easy to *win* with that character. As a Street Fighter player you should know this.

Just like every other fighting game, MK11 will have characters with lower barriers to execution, and ones with more complex mechanics and gameplan considerations. It’s a spectrum.

However, what you’re speaking to is a game balance issue, and is totally separate from what the devs were describing in that stream.

If you give a character, any character, a single that can dominate most of the cast, it has detrimental effects on the meta. That isn’t about execution barrier, it’s just bad balance.

 

[Saint Op Omen]

We still talking about pushing buttons right?
I'm no good at it anyway.

 

[xenogorgeous]

blah blah blah.

Execution shouldn't be the skill barrier. It should be your reads, knowledge of punishes/combos, situational awareness, spacing, etc.

Not whether you can roll your thumb in two 360 rotations while mashing both bumpers and slapping your ass.

this !!

the skill to outplay your opponent and to bait him/her to make mistakes during the match , it's a more important aspect , I guess.

 

[Blewdew]

I really like it when a Character gets way better with harder execution, it really adds depth to a character and you get rewarded for putting effort and Time in that character like dvorah, mk9 skarlet or poison ivy.
I don‘t have a problem with Characters being easy to use but yeah it get‘s annoying when a potato character is way easier than your hard to play character and is still a better Character overall.
Still, I think even if a Character is really hard to play they‘ll be overplayed eventually despite being execution heavy. A good example is Fox in melee, crazy hard execution on the highest level, yet over 50% of the top 100 Players are maining him.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

One thing I wanna say is that Predator’s cancels weren’t hard, you don’t even have to run, you just dash out and you’re plus lol

A-List, Dragon’s Fire, and D’Vorah may have been tougher to physically input their cancels, but once you get the muscle memory down, their game plan is incredibly easy. That being said, pre patch A-List did have a lot of variance in how he was used. The cancels were a lot more versatile but in the last patch you really only get once cancel and it is almost always gonna be F3.

I do kinda agree with P2W that execution can be a way to give characters more depth and avoid Deadshot situations, but I don’t know if it is always the best way for every character.

 

[ismael4790]

Depends on what you understand by "easy to use/easy to learn" (which people usually associate with easy execution).

A character can have easy execution in terms of inputs or combos, but at the same time could require a lot of situational awareness from the player, to be on point with strict punishes, to have in mind many potential bad risk/reward situations, etc. I wouldn't describe that character as easy to use. Easy execution does not necessarily mean it's easy to jump to the battleground and be successful with a character, there are much more factors.

I think the problem nrs games have had multiple times is that they have offered many examples of characters that NOT ONLY are easy to learn in terms of combos, but ALSO their strategy is simple, VERY effective and also much harder for the defender to counter than it is for the offender to set it up.

 

[Second Saint]

I feel like we have to distinguish between depth and complexity here. In my view, execution adds no depth whatsoever. If an option is hard to do, that doesn't change the mind game around that option, which is what I would define as depth within a fighting game.

This isn't to say that I don't believe complexity isn't important because I happen to agree with nearly every point you make. Lack of complexity made I2 into the most counter pick heavy game we've ever seen. Barring maybe 3 characters, most could be picked up in a couple weeks. Something genuinely does need to be done to discourage the counter pick meta.

 

[Blewdew]

One thing I wanna say is that Predator’s cancels weren’t hard, you don’t even have to run, you just dash out and you’re plus lol

A-List, Dragon’s Fire, and D’Vorah may have been tougher to physically input their cancels, but once you get the muscle memory down, their game plan is incredibly easy. That being said, pre patch A-List did have a lot of variance in how he was used. The cancels were a lot more versatile but in the last patch you really only get once cancel and it is almost always gonna be F3.

I do kinda agree with P2W that execution can be a way to give characters more depth and avoid Deadshot situations, but I don’t know if it is always the best way for every character.

To be fair there is more to it, dvorah had crazy conversation potential which can‘t be practiced too well, imo these moments show you How good you actually are with a Charakter

 

[Law Hero]

I feel like we have to distinguish between depth and complexity here. In my view, execution adds no depth whatsoever. If an option is hard to do, that doesn't change the mind game around that option, which is what I would define as depth within a fighting game.

I don't think that's entirely accurate. It depends on the level of difficulty of the inputs. For example, in Tekken, there are many examples of very difficult-to-execute moves/combos that require decisions to be made in the heat of battle. For instance, moves like Kazuya's CH d/f+2 into EWGF. If you land that CH, you have to decide on the spot between going for the optimal combo which is risky as a result of its difficulty, or a safe combo for guaranteed damage. Additionally, when someone who understands the game watches, it's insanely hype to see someone land a super hard and super risky-to-do combo. Another notable example is Bryan's Taunt/Jet Upper.

As someone with pretty bad execution, high barrier definitely negatively impact me, but I don't think it's fair to say they at absolutely no depth whatsoever to the game.

 

[Braindead]

Not whether you can roll your thumb in two 360 rotations while mashing both bumpers and slapping your ass.

 

[Circus]

Johnny Cage definitely looks like he's easy to use on the surface, sure.

But Johnny doesn't have any real overheads at all.
He relies on perfect spacing of his opponent's moves, perfect spacing on his own moves, brave walkup grabs, and pressure with his stunt doubles/hook-punches/staggers.

Not only that, but there is also the fact he gets cancels at 30% health.

While he might be easy on the surface, to open up his opponent at the highest level is going to take a certain level of mastery that someone isn't just going to casually pick up like they would Deadshot from Injustice2.

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I just used Johnny as an example there, but my point is that imo there is nothing inherently so broken-looking at the moment that will skew matchups so obviously like some characters in INJ2 did.

The tools people had in INJ2 made it so that game was incredibly matchup dependent(more matchup dependent than any NRS game to date). For example, Captain Cold just ABSOLUTELY F**KED some characters who relied on close combat.

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As time goes on, I really don't think we'll have base variations. I think we're going full kustomizable tbh.

Hopefully that'll really make it so character specialization stays a thing, but honestly, there is no way to 100% gauge this kind of shit until we all see how some of these matchups are in real time.

TBH, I'm not concerned. I was for INJ2 almost immediately because some characters just clearly countered others even on paper before getting the game in your hands, but I just don't see that in MK11 on the surface.

 

[DixieFlatline78]

We'll have to see how the technology develops before drawing conclusions like this, but it would be unfortunate for the meta to be counterpick heavy. Specializing a character is a fighting game experience that everyone should get to have.

 

[stokedAF]

They said he was easy to play in that he is like mk2 cage. Mk2 wasn’t an easy game, to me at least lol.

16bit just got done saying that cage wasn’t a 50/50 character and that you didn’t have to worry about overheads. In his matches against cage all he did was low block and crushed him. He had a game plan and was prepared for the character. He picked a character to beat cage. I think it will be a bit different once the full roster is out and being played.

 

[RoboCop]

“Easy to use” doesn’t necessarily mean “easy to master”. Just because a character is easy to pick up and do well with without high execution doesn’t mean they won’t be even more effective in the hands of a more skilled player.

 

[omooba]

The top tier character should be built in a way that whatever makes them top tier is very hard to do and without it they are mid tier.

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

blah blah blah.

Execution shouldn't be the skill barrier. It should be your reads, knowledge of punishes/combos, situational awareness, spacing, etc.

Not whether you can roll your thumb in two 360 rotations while mashing both bumpers and slapping your ass.

i respect your opinion. so what do you think of most fightings games that had higher skills gaps with execution like kof?

 

[PLAYING TO WIN]

Using a character that is execution heavy that you're good at, or using an 'easy' character that you know just as well won't make a difference at all.

There have always been 'easy' characters in games. Take Batman in IJ2. If the player doesn't know him well, they will still lose regardless. It has a lot to do with the player's skill, not the character itself.

I agree 100% BUT the execution heavy character will take much more investment. I will keep returning to the I2 deadshot example. There were a lot of top players that had a 3 day old very little time invested character that were beating other top players mains in top 8s of majors. That is my biggest point here.