I'm going to address Slips's post in a minute but first let's talk about something real quick. The whole "there are more positives than negatives in the patch, therefore the patch is good!" argument is intellectually dishonest and I'm surprised people are taking that seriously.
First off, as I proved in my last post, large communities playing relatively straightforward games like SF4 have failed miserably to assess the balance of the game after a long period of time, measured in months and years. So when I read through this thread and see things like "XXX, YYY, ZZZ characters were broken, the patch nerfed them, 3 good changes!!!" I want to roll my eyes. You don't know where these characters would have wound up long term, if the community would have found appropriate counters, if the overall tone of the game would have changed making their strengths obsolete and exposing their weaknesses. You rely on an outside source (the patch) to solve the problem rather than letting the players solve it for themselves.
Also, when you refer to so many characters as "broken" it waters the word down to the point of meaninglessness. As I said in the last post, Slips mentioned FIVE characters as either broken or incapable of being countered. Even if he was right, that means they're not actually broken and that you have a top tier that a meta can develop around. There is no possible way of knowing if that meta would have been better than the final game, after the next 10-12 patches. So much changes so often that you can't even theorycraft your way around it. I mean in a world with Tanya would initial patch Quan Chi even be "broken" anymore? Seems to me he would be countered pretty hard. I don't even think he was #1 at the time of his nerf anyways, that round of nerfs was questionable to say the least. This version of Sub Zero seems like he does OK on CEO version Tanya, with day 1 non-nerfed GM Sub, that might be a really tough matchup. With a hard counter the Tanya hysteria might never happen and she'd just be another strong character. As I said, we have no way of testing it and it's not even worth theoryfighting about. So please, stop using nerfed characters as proof of success, it's just not true and you know better.
Next, I want to talk about the conclusion reached that "patches make it better competitively!" When someone posted my facebook post, Slips assumed that when I was talking about how the game was different at every major that I was saying that these were positive changes. I said nothing of the sort. What I will say is that out of all the majors we've had so far the CEO version was the worst one, and I'm not sure anyone can dispute that. The patching strategy by NRS clearly failed CEO. They tried to nerf Tanya and failed. They weakened 2 popular characters on extremely short notice and lowered the level of play at the tournament. They weakened Fisticuffs Johnny a character nobody was complaining about balance wise simply because DJT vs. SonicFox "looked silly". On Twitter I even called out this nerf while the match was going on, it was something NRS was definitely going to do not for game balancing reasons but because they didn't want people to laugh at their game. So I think all the talk about patching making tournaments better needs to be put on hold when we have actual evidence that for MKX it simply isn't true. After all the patches, we're in a worse position competitively than we were with 0 patches.
Of course the obvious solution that they're going to take is PATCH MORE.
Let's look at MKX's predecessors and how the patching decisions did for their games competitive lifespan. MK9 was released April 2011. Injustice was released April 2013. Marvel 3 was released before both of them. It's still going. SF4 first came out way before both of them. It's still going, still the #1 competitive fighting game despite my objections. Melee came out in 2001! It's going stronger than ever. If the final versions of MK9 and Injustice were enhanced by the patches and put into a long term enjoyable state then people should have still been playing MK9 and watching MK9 streams in 2013-2014 and people should still be playing Injustice and watching Injustice right now. Neither of those have happened. Those games even have a lower interest level now than old versions of other studio games like MvC2, 3s, GGAC, etc. Maybe Injustice desperately needed help because after it's performance at Evo it was an exposed game competitively but it shouldn't have been shipped in that condition in the first place. If the patching truly helped the long term competitive balance of those games, their lifespans should have been extended. But that didn't happen.
So maybe it's time to take a step back. These games had a short competitive lifespan and a very short stream lifespan compared to their peers. Maybe it's time to ask why.
Now, let's move on a little bit and address Slips's last post to me where he talked about "the needs of the many" and about how if Kitana, Reptile, Mileena, etc players would keep playing if not for the hope of patches (and we must be talking about hope because even after all the patches, Kitana and Reptile still are not good characters).
Let's start by asking a question. Are these patches designed to appeal to casual players or tournament players?
By context it seems like he was suggesting that we should cater to casuals (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But if the goal is to keep interest and keep the game strong, this is a losing battle. For the first 2 months of MKX's lifespan it was doing better numbers than SF4/Marvel on twitch and getting entrants on par with SF4. Those numbers have started trending downwards as casual attention has faded. MKX is still well above Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Persona, etc. in terms of attention but going forward into Evo and beyond it's pretty clear that the casual interest bump that put MKX over SF4 has ended and that SF4 will outdraw it in attention going forward. Appealing to casuals is a losing battle; they cannot be satisfied and will leave on their own for their own reasons. SF4 lost them, Marvel lost them, Guilty Gear lost them, MKX is currently losing them. Appealing to them is not worth it.
So we must be aiming these patches at tournament level players, right? As the entrant level drop in MK9 and Injustice showed, these patches turned these people off as they are being turned off in MKX. So that can't be true either.
Let me give you actual specifics as to what it's going to take me to stay current with MKX. Others (not Slips) have said in this thread and elsewhere that it's just small changes and shouldn't be that big a deal.
I play Sonya. I like CO best (obviously) but I dabbled in SF before it was nerfed and I'm pretty sure there's some juice in Demolition now after 6/23 but it's going to take a lot of work to bring it out. I'm reasonably sure Sonya is a top 10 character as of right now as her natural enemies keep falling by the wayside 1 by 1. She may even be a little better than that. She's also been fortunate in that CO has been relatively untouched up to now.
Let's talk some of her matchups. D'Vorah vs. Sonya pre 6/23 was probably a 6-4 matchup for D'Vorah but it was a matchup I'd played out a bit and felt relatively confident in. Was I ever going to beat Honeybee? No. I just don't have that level of MK fundamentals. But I felt pretty confident that I could hold my own with a lot of D'Vorah players.
Even though CO Sonya is primarily a rushdown character I played that match around the tip of my F+2 range because I wanted to stay away from F112 as that's the most likely way I could get myself into trouble and the other person's most likely way to start offense. If I'm slightly out of range I can punish F1 on reaction with low air divekick. I can use backdash and decent backward walking speed to control range as I see fit and also use F+2 xx military stance or F+4 xx military stance/leg grab option select to make sure I don't walk myself into the corner. Even knowing this, this strategy necessitates giving up ground as a smart player would understand what I was doing and walk me down. So I'd be playing out of the midscreen for the most part. Instead of using 21, 21u4 as my juggle ender to gain screen space, I'd use a custom setup I developed myself ending juggles with F+2, max height 124 to get the hard knockdown.
It is (it was) an interesting setup especially on characters whose wakeup games you didn't have a lot of fear of. Instant divekick from upback would get you to land right in front of her on her wakeup before she gets up allowing either 11 xx military stance, overhead, low, throw options or go straight to military stance and evaluate options from there. Instant divekick from upforward would get behind her but not the same options since there would be a slight delay. Going into military stance or straight throw worked out OK but lost to mashing. You'd have to condition someone to get mileage out of that setup. If you either delay getting off the ground for the divekick, lower the height before ending the juggle with 124, or do the divekick slightly higher you can force them to block on wakeup and it was safe-ish on block because it was so low but still not recommended because a slight miscalculation in height leads to F112 and that's just not good. OS to catch backdash, full combo on hit. Pretty decent stuff. Not many other Sonya's really explored the F+2, 124 ender so I got a lot of mileage out of this stuff. 21, 21u4 was far far more common.
Were I to get myself into trouble blocking F112 you could flicker guard going low to high since B+1 was faster. Sometimes I'd even let them have B+1 just to check if they could get a full combo out of it since the execution was so tight (pre 6/23 4f maximum IIRC). For longer sets this kind of thing is useful information. Around patch time I was also working on a lazy man's OS starting with a low block into a backdash since the timing to jail off overhead was so tight. I'd pay the small damage penalty to get out of the situation. I think it was going somewhere but I had lots more testing to do to know whether it was real or not.
This was all pre 6/22. In theory this match got a lot better for me. In reality, it means a lot of work for me.
One of the few nerfs CO Sonya got is 5f extra landing penalty on whiff divekick. So all the work I put into F+2, max height 124 setups, more or less out the window. The setup still has legs but not as many, almost all the stuff involving a go behind is out the window. Landing in front gives just about the same landing situation as landing behind did before. Were I to keep this going forward I'd have to figure out how to incorporate leg slam as an option in here somewhere in order to control wakeup buttons. But I haven't got that far yet. For now this is a matchup where I'll end juggles in 21, 21u4 or F+2, 121 leg grab depending on positioning. Not the end of the world, relatively simple adjustment to make.
But now I'm not exactly sure where to stand. The matchup calculus has changed. Do I allow her into range of F112? I mean it's still a rough situation but only low is guaranteed. Plus low into full combo is even harder meaning drops and suboptimal punishes are more likely if I give that up. If I don't fear the following mixup, doesn't that mean F112 is less scary? Doesn't that mean that I should base less of my gameplan around whiff punishing and just get in there and mix it up? I'm not sure. If I give her the range that I was giving her before and just play the match out as I was doing, don't I allow her to get an unearned advantage by letting her walk me down and not letting me get to the corner? She still outdamages me so I have to play carefully but HOW carefully is optimal?
I don't know.
It's going to take a lot of match experience first off just to test how the changes actually play out, then once I make a decision I'm going to have to play even more to build muscle memory and make sure I'm making the right decision over and over. As much as I wish I could just delete things from my brain, I'm not a computer, muscle memory/reversion to old habits is a real thing. This will take time.
Instinctively I still think D'Vorah probably beats Sonya, although it did get better. But maybe I'm wrong. I just don't know and given that the online is so bad, I don't even know how I can test it going forward since I probably won't be able to get a good long casual set with a D'Vorah until I actually get into Vegas next week.
Ultradavid mentioned that what he hates most in games is uncertainty. He and I have a pretty similar attitude on games (play the same characters in some games also) so I agree with him on that but what I hate even more than that is wasted time. I spent a lot of time working on this matchup because I assessed D'Vorah pre 6/23 as a very strong character going forward. Now I feel like this time was not just wasted but detrimental to me going forward as I'm going to be playing the matchup incorrectly for a little while until I get adjusted.
Similarly let's look at vs. Tempest Kung Lao since it features a similar situation. Previously I gave him space like I gave D'Vorah because I didn't want him to get his pressure started. But the most recent patch from a couple days ago weakened his frame advantage off MB hat and I saw a video where Quan Chi uppercutted him out of the resulting string. Can Sonya do that? If Quan Chi can uppercut that means I can also buffer leg grab from crouch. Pretty sure at least. I honestly don't know, it's written on my “stuff to look at” excel list. I don't even know HOW different that match is yet because I haven't put in the time yet. Also I don't have to worry about changing my juggle and my setups because I respected his wakeup too much to mess with empty divekick setups. So at least I have that going for me, only 2 major points of uncertainty going forward.
Again, note that my character is almost completely unchanged. I've been lucky. Far luckier than if I had chosen a different character to work on 2 months ago. Doing this (necessary) process if I was a Scorpion player and not even sure of my character's own options just adds an extra level of headache.
This is what I want to avoid. I don't want to do this re-evaluation process every 2 weeks until NRS decides they're “done”. This is what it's going to take to be a top player at this game, something that doesn't happen at ANY OTHER MAJOR STUDIO'S games. Actually multiply that by 3 because I'm pretty sure you need at least 3 characters to insulate yourself from the patching process. It's just too much.
As someone who's competed at the very top levels of other games I know what kind of work it takes to be a top player at a game. It's an intimidating process even without the ground shifting out from under you on a bi-weekly basis. Say what you will about me, but after Evo I just don't think this is for me.
And as I said before, this is one man's opinion but as the falling entrant and viewer numbers show, I am not alone. Not by a longshot.
