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NRS's Misunderstanding Of Balance

Chernyy Volk

Chernyy Volk

Wolf lord, footsie bully, chronic corner abuser.

Some of this is going to be subjective, but I'm curious to see what peoples opinions on this particular subject are.

NRS's trend in their games, has typically been to balance things on the fundamental level by capacity. You can't, you can, or you sort of can. This is different to the approach most other FG's use which is, when it comes to basic fundamental situations such as anti airs, punishment etc, the ACCESS is equal, the rewards are different. This is what creates a fundamental foundation for a fighting game.

I personally think NRS's way of going about this is pretty bad and leads to a LOT of arbitrary difficulty that basically means that, one guy can always get rewarded for the read, for being right, but the other guy almost never can or in some instances can get punished for the right read. In MK11, I think it's never been worse.

Thoughts?
 
TrulyAmiracle

TrulyAmiracle

Loud and Klear~
Haven't watched the whole video, but I wanna talk about the "everyone should have access to everything", I don't agree on this mainly because no FG really has this.

Not every character has projectiles, not every character has command throws, not every character has the same anti-airs, not every character has a hop kick.

Making everything universal such as u3/u2 is imo going backwards, its like how jump punches and kicks were the same for everyone in MK9. I get the point you're trying to make but varying them makes the character what they are. It's in other games, different wakeup options for every character, this character has a Shoryuken and this character has an invincible grab but this character has no wake up options.
I'll give you some examples, SF4 Focus attacks. It was a universal mechanic, just like u2/u3 but they were different for every character. Some amazing and some totally worthless.
Samsho universal overheads, some jump, some have mad range, different for every character.

That all being said, I feel MK11's issue is a lot of things like this werent thought out imo, they just threw in different animations and properties for the sake of being different. It's like Kung Jin's j2 and njP being insane when he already had a million ways to cover the air anyway.
This in theory should be fine if they all worked in the situations where they should've, I still remember how Kollector's u2 straight up didn't have a hitbox at the game's release.

With your NW example, it doesn't look intentional and I agree that it probably shouldn't happen. But things like that do happen, with how varied the animations, move speeds, safety etc of the u3s and u2s its bound to happen.
Going back to SF4 Focus as an example, one way to deal with them was double hitting normals/moves (if you didn't know, they allowed you to absorb 1 hit), but some characters straight up shat on that like Seth and Dudley that swayed back in their animation make those focus attacks beat the moves that were basically designed to beat them.
Should they have fixed that? Maybe. They released a bazillion SF4 versions, did they fix them? nah.
Is NRS gonna fix the disparity between character's u2/u3? Very unlikely. Hell we still have some hitbox issues that have been known since day 1 that are still in the game.

I'm not gonna even try to go into anti-airs, lord knows that NRS can't figure how jumps and anti-airs should interact and its been this way since MK9 (probably earlier too but idk enough about earlier games).
Definitely isn't new and it's unfortunate that its still a thing. The way jumpkicks work in their games is just bananas lol. A telegraphed jumpkick shouldnt be this hard to anti-air.
 
Marlow

Marlow

Champion
Chernyy Volk said:
NRS's trend in their games, has typically been to balance things on the fundamental level by capacity. You can't, you can, or you sort of can. This is different to the approach most other FG's use which is, when it comes to basic fundamental situations such as anti airs, punishment etc, the ACCESS is equal, the rewards are different. This is what creates a fundamental foundation for a fighting game.
Click to expand...
I guess I'm not seeing much of a difference. In MK11, every character has access to a lot of universal tools, they just happen to function differently, which sounds a lot like your "Access is equal but rewards are different' idea. Every character has the same tool of a D2, D1, D4, S1 punish string, U2/U3, but the strength or reward for those across different characters is quite varied.

If anything I think the opposite of what you're saying is true. Pretty much every character in MK11 has a solid set of fundamental tools, which is why so many characters are competitively viable. If you have good fundamentals and make good reads you can almost always outplay your opponent, regardless of character matchup.

Chernyy Volk said:
that basically means that, one guy can always get rewarded for the read, for being right, but the other guy almost never can or in some instances can get punished for the right read. In MK11, I think it's never been worse.
Click to expand...
I don't agree with this at all. If you're getting punished for making the "right" read, then how was your read considered right?
 
Wrenchfarm

Wrenchfarm

Lexcorp Proprietary Technologies
so I've kept this playing in the back while I work and I cannot believe it's 18 minutes bitching about Nightwolf not being able to U2 Baraka's 112 string when in the corner and then another 10 mins about how Nightwolf's standing jab only has a 50%ish success rate vs different jump kick timings (despite demonstrating IN THE VIDEO that Nightwolf can adjust his spacing and respond to jump ins with other moves successfully). Then to prove the point, he takes some jumps in as Lui and shows he has... about a 50-60% success rate AAing with his standing jab?

Bro? Really?
 
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Gaxkang

Gaxkang

Banned
Marlow said:
I don't agree with this at all. If you're getting punished for making the "right" read, then how was your read considered right?
Click to expand...
Well if the game gets in your way or screams out "Counterpiiiiiick!" well... ;)

Somebody in another thread said MK11 is a party game with blood and gore, and basically that is what it is.
 
Sazbak

Sazbak

Mortal
Some things should definitely work consistently among the cast, like antiairing. My effort should match the effort the other player puts in. Jumping is easy, and you can freely do it anytime, no special situation is required. Therefore it shouldn't be this effective in a game and require me to put in way more effort than the jumper. Jumping, along with other certain mechanic was purposely made to be like this to support scrubs, who just want to do simple yet effective things, that come to them naturally.
Bad design.
 
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Sazbak

Sazbak

Mortal
TrulyAmiracle said:
I get the point you're trying to make but varying them makes the character what they are.
Click to expand...
I agree but only if we are talking about different types of the same move, playstyle etc. If something is not working properly vs the same move is working for other characters then it's bad design imo.
E.g. it's ok to give a longer range u2/u3 for a character to make him unique, but it's not ok to give an u2/u3 that doesn't do its job.
 
Hellbringer

Hellbringer

1 2 3 drink
Gaxkang said:
Well if the game gets in your way or screams out "Counterpiiiiiick!" well... ;)

Somebody in another thread said MK11 is a party game with blood and gore, and basically that is what it is.
Click to expand...
For new players or casual players thats a good desciption.

For me super smash also looks like a partygame but i admit i never played it and have no idea how the mechanics work, even tho it requieres alot of skill to get good at.
 
Gaxkang

Gaxkang

Banned
Hellbringer said:
For new players or casual players thats a good desciption.

For me super smash also looks like a partygame but i admit i never played it and have no idea how the mechanics work, even tho it requieres alot of skill to get good at.
Click to expand...
The fatal blows and krushing blows make MK11 seem like a party game overall right off the bat. But other mechanics too.

Smash was made for kids, but they say adults i guess come up with strategy and timing. it's still debatable whether it's really considered a fighting game by people i suppose.
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Gaxkang said:
The fatal blows and krushing blows make MK11 seem like a party game
Click to expand...
If it's a party game, you should be able to beat everybody through luck of the draw, right? So we should all be Master Rank and no one should be Elder God/Apprentice.

But hmm.. How is Sonic able to win so consistently? Is he a known Party Game master?

Like, at some point these arguments become so ridiculous that it's embarassing. I have plenty of friends who play party games, but none of them would like playing me in MK11 because they're never going to land those Fatal or Krushing Blows. And they're going to spend the rest of the match getting beat up.
 
axcelerate

axcelerate

Mortal
CrimsonShadow said:
If it's a party game, you should be able to beat everybody through luck of the draw, right? So we should all be Master Rank and no one should be Elder God/Apprentice.

But hmm.. How is Sonic able to win so consistently? Is he a known Party Game master?

Like, at some point these arguments become so ridiculous that it's embarassing. I have plenty of friends who play party games, but none of them would like playing me in MK11 because they're never going to land those Fatal or Krushing Blows. And they're going to spend the rest of the match getting beat up.
Click to expand...
Get Em.
 
Gaxkang

Gaxkang

Banned
CrimsonShadow said:
If it's a party game, you should be able to beat everybody through luck of the draw, right? So we should all be Master Rank and no one should be Elder God/Apprentice.

But hmm.. How is Sonic able to win so consistently? Is he a known Party Game master?

Like, at some point these arguments become so ridiculous that it's embarassing. I have plenty of friends who play party games, but none of them would like playing me in MK11 because they're never going to land those Fatal or Krushing Blows. And they're going to spend the rest of the match getting beat up.
Click to expand...
I would say more luck is involved than say reactions, sure. My perspective is online vs. fights only, btw. So add some lag onto that barby. ;)
And yeah...you can lose from a bad dice roll, a bad guess, you can be blown up by minimal effort or strategy. Game still has the counterpick thing going on too.
"Party game" for a fighting game it amounts to how much luck is involved, how much cheesiness is around, how well made the fighting interactions are (hitboxes), what kind of gameplay is encouraged, how the gameplay is limited, so forth. Does the game reward good reactions more or more luck or someone understanding the general wonkiness of the game design?

Getting out of apprentice is not particularly difficult, while the way the system is it's very grindy to get into higher ranks without a regular flow of higher or same rank fights. A hard fought set may only give you 10 points.
Some characters lead to victory much more simply than others. Can someone who knows some more stuff or some very general carryover from another fighter do better against a newcomer? yeah...but it's easy to get blown up too if straying from the constraints of the gameplay encouraged.

Sonic has a real knack for NRS designed games, and he done well with Fighter Z too. he didn't stick around in Street Fighter.

As for you not getting hit by krushing blows or fatal blows...well some FB's are easier to avoid then others, some change fights totally once active. Avoiding krushing blows, that's a taller order.
But sounds like you're ready for the big leagues if you are immune. :D
 
Scoot Magee

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
CrimsonShadow said:
If it's a party game, you should be able to beat everybody through luck of the draw, right? So we should all be Master Rank and no one should be Elder God/Apprentice.

But hmm.. How is Sonic able to win so consistently? Is he a known Party Game master?

Like, at some point these arguments become so ridiculous that it's embarassing. I have plenty of friends who play party games, but none of them would like playing me in MK11 because they're never going to land those Fatal or Krushing Blows. And they're going to spend the rest of the match getting beat up.
Click to expand...
Not liking krushing and fatal blows is a valid criticism imo. Party game? No but those mechanics do add sort of a wild card comeback factor to the game. This can be less appealing to some players. This has been debated way back to even Super Turbo. I dont think it's too unreasonable to not be a fan of the way these mechanics work.
 
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