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It's not chemistry. Combining different moves together doesn't yield something completely different.

I keep hearing this argument against custom variations. That it would require too much lab time to learn how to deal with all the possible combinations players could come up with.

But it just doesn't make sense to me.

If a character has 3 moves... (lets take baraka for example) gutted, spines, flag bash

And you know the properties of these moves like how safe they are on block, the range, hit advantage ect.

What does it matter what other moves they are combined with? If you know that gutted is unsafe on block. And they do gutted and you block it...well you punish it the same regardless of whether they are running gutted + spines or gutted + flag.

Once you know the properties of the individual moves it really shouldn't matter in what way they are combined into one variation because of the properties of the move itself doesn't change.

In fact, in the beta, the only example of a character having a move that changed the property of another was scorpion with his chains + burning spear move...and all that did was increase the chain's damage.


TLDR: Once you know the individual moves you shouldn't have to spend time labbing individual combinations.
 

Marinjuana

Up rock incoming, ETA 5 minutes
There's enough threads already for this stuff methinks but I agree, many of these moves are straight forward and easy to understand the implications of using them. If Skarlet uses her damage buff/blood rain or the defensive buff, she has two buffs. That's not complicated. It's not hard to understand that blood ritual can kill you in low health situations. Jade's projectile reflect is a projectile reflect, her classic shadow kick is ultimately a minor issue from a defensive standpoint. Even some of the really good shit like Kabal's low or his restand, it's not hard to grasp that Kabal has low mixups and can leave you standing with plus frames.

I don't want to completely dismiss this idea from a balance standpoint but from a player memory standpoint that shit was not hard.
 

Professor Oak

Are you a boy or girl?
Its very simple! Two combo extenders could cause abnormally high damage, having tools that eliminate too many weaknesses making the character “broken”, or just giving access to attacks with oppressive synergy can all be looked at as moves being too strong together but maybe not alone.
 

Professor Oak

Are you a boy or girl?
Its not about memory, its about Strength. Imagine Summoner Quan Chi with damage buffs, or Tempest Lao with Buzzsaw hat toss. Imagine a triborg with low bombs, an overhead tele, and a fast proectile. Not chemistry, simple addition. Not all moves have the same value, adding two great moves will sometimes equal a characterwith too much strength
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
Skarlet has a bunch of combos that improves her play on a manner never seen before

Imagine having a damage buff, a hability to take less damage which in turn makes her blood sacrifice do more damage to the opponent, and far less on her.
 

Marinjuana

Up rock incoming, ETA 5 minutes
Skarlet has a bunch of combos that improves her play on a manner never seen before

Imagine having a damage buff, a hability to take less damage which in turn makes her blood sacrifice do more damage to the opponent, and far less on her.
That sounds rad dude. She is sacrificing a lot to get a cool setup. That's the kind of stuff I want to be able to discover and have fun with.
 

Bloodfang

The Immortal Tiger
I agree and disagree. For the record I am ALWAYS in favor of kustom anything. I CAN kind of get the move synergy argument in terms of:

For an extremely overly simplistic example, say I've discovered that the best answer to "Move A" when on a preset loadout was simply to leap the hell over it and jump kick them. Now with a kustom loadout my opponent has added "Move B" which is an insanely good anti-air to shutdown that weakness and it makes them much harder to deal with because the two moves work TOO well together but weren't combined in any preset.

Devil's Advocate argument, however (or if you prefer "the Socratic Method"), if they really consider themselves a pro competitor and kustom tournament loadouts were a thing to be trained for, they should have anticipated the possibility of this combination and trained for it. If they didn't that's a learning experience and it is on them. They will be ready next time.

EDIT: There is still potential for there to be a design oversight that causes an unintended and unforseen severe imbalance if Move A and Move B are used together that would likely need to be adjusted through a patch, lol.
 
D

Deleted member 59910

Guest
Totally agree. Kabal for example: You just need to know if the opponent is using low hook grab, low spinner and NDC.
 

Bloodfang

The Immortal Tiger
So just to be clear, if a character has a projectile OR an anti air, he is equally lethal to a character who has a projectile AND an anti-air? Cause that's nonsense.
Lol, if this was in reply to my example (projectile + anti-air, lmao) I did say it was a GROSS oversimplification of the anti-Kustom argument. I said I understood the argument not that I agreed that it was a GOOD one.
 

Bloodfang

The Immortal Tiger
If mods dont close this, Idk what to think.

This is (soap bar in my mouth). Its simple, you guys are just uninformed.
I understand your stance actually, there are DEFINITELY some move synergies that could potentially severly throw off balance. I just don't see how it is intrinsically different IF you have those same broken move synergies on a preset for a character like Kabal and I don't have a preset that gives me what I need to deal with it BUT if I could kustom build I might be able to rearrange a few moves and create something that could help deal with that OP moveset that the other character was just given by default. Flame me as a know nothing casual if you like it's just the argument being presented as I see it.

Edit: My point was simply in the past if they had given Summoner Quan Chi a damage buff move by default (no customs) but didn't give my character a means of dealing with it by default there was nothing I could do about it. With customs I MIGHT be able to retool some things to deal with that poorly balanced default loadout. Maybe.
 
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I understand your stance actually, there are DEFINITELY some move synergies that could potentially severly throw off balance. I just don't see how it is intrinsically different IF you have those same broken move synergies on a preset for a character like Kabal and I don't have a preset that gives me what I need to deal with it BUT if I could kustom build I might be able to rearrange a few moves and create something that could help deal with that OP moveset that the other character was just given by default. Flame me as a know nothing casual if you like it's just the argument being presented as I see it.
Yes, but those move synergies can easily be dealt with by making those abilities exclusionary or having them both take up two slots. It's an easy problem to handle simply by using the existing system they've already designed for avoiding having abilities do exactly this.

They are going to end up releasing patches which tone down OP moves that characters end up having no matter what they do, so it's simple enough for them to do it using this system instead of hacking in a whole different one.
 

Bloodfang

The Immortal Tiger
Yes, but those move synergies can easily be dealt with by making those abilities exclusionary or having them both take up two slots. It's an easy problem to handle simply by using the existing system they've already designed for avoiding having abilities do exactly this.

They are going to end up releasing patches which tone down OP moves that characters end up having no matter what they do, so it's simple enough for them to do it using this system instead of hacking in a whole different one.
Was this an argument for or against kustoms? Which do you consider "current" vs a "whole different" one? Without kustoms the "slot points" bit is moot as the presets in X and in the 11 betas were obviously not put together with game balancing and what moves work well or poorly together balance wise in mind. The presets in both games (from what we've seen so far) are more based on a "theme" of the character that they thought up like Scorpion that uses all fire based moves VS Scorpion that uses all chain moves. Or overly gassy Kabal. Whether the preset ends up being OP or worthless is seemingly dealt with later.