Perfect Imbalance - A way to balance MK X?

[callMEcrazy]

I think as far as a fighting games goes when speaking of a "Perfect Imbalance" we should consider a few things...
1st. Player skill and ease of execution. This being how easy a character can be to play vs. what it's muscle memory learning curve is.
2nd. Advantage + Disadvantage on block or hit for each character's moves. This being weather or not certain moves are capable of "Stuffing" or interrupting another character's move.
3rd. The ease of understanding how each character competes with one another. This being for example, a zoning character vs. a grappler and how each one adapts to the other on a fundamental level.
With these things in mind and the way we have scene MKX to have three different play styles per character, I firmly hope that Ed Boon and crew and taking these things into account. If so and we get lucky then the "Perfect Imbalance" the OP's video described would be achieved. Otherwise we will simply have to suffer through yet another bundle of patches and NRS screw ups.
We can only hope

Big fat NO for the 1st point. Difficulty of playing a character can never be part of balance IMO. If that happens then characters that are tough to execute will be balanced out with stronger tools. That is precisely how a Kabal is born. To pro players difficulty of execution doesn't matter. They pick characters totally regardless of that. A casual player might be tempted to pick up Ermac or Cage because they are easy to play. But a pro will simply pick the character with highest overall potential no matter how easy or difficult it is to play, i.e Kabal, Lao, Cyrax.

I don't exactly understand your whole post but I got that first point. Character difficulty is not something you can pull into balance.

 

[Art]

Big fat NO for the 1st point. Difficulty of playing a character can never be part of balance IMO. If that happens then characters that are tough to execute will be balanced out with stronger tools. That is precisely how a Kabal is born. To pro players difficulty of execution doesn't matter. They pick characters totally regardless of that. A casual player might be tempted to pick up Ermac or Cage because they are easy to play. But a pro will simply pick the character with highest overall potential no matter how easy or difficult it is to play, i.e Kabal, Lao, Cyrax.

I don't exactly understand your whole post but I got that first point. Character difficulty is not something you can pull into balance.

Your forgetting one thing. Casual players also have to do with the success of a game, as much as pro-players. The studio needs all sources of income. To make a game that's difficult to play for the casual player would be a disaster. Once people found out about the difficulty the sales would drop, and we would see less support for the game.

The game HAS to have a mixture of both difficulty levels in order to be successful. Take Street Fighter as an example. E-Honda and Blanka have pretty easy to use move-sets, but are still in the game and not "Top-Tier", where as characters such as Seth or Rose are arguably more powerful but have harder move-sets to learn, yet they are both in the same game of witch is the most successful fighting game around at the moment.

 

[The Highlander]

I agree with the video. The reason why so many high level chess games result in stalemates is simply because everyone knows of the fixed strategies that work and how to counter them and it does get boring imo.

I get what you're trying to say but as someone who likes chess a bit I have to say you are completely wrong with that analogy. If a high level chess game ends in stalemate something has gone wrong, I think you mean draw and even then the best players enter positions that haven't been studied as much just so they can edge out a win. Think about it this way, chess has been around for centuries and there is still no 'solution', no perfect way to play it. The highest level chess computer can even still be beaten because of the sheer complexity around how many different moves could be made. That is what you call a pretty balance game by FG standards...

 

[Crathen]

Big fat NO for the 1st point. Difficulty of playing a character can never be part of balance IMO. If that happens then characters that are tough to execute will be balanced out with stronger tools. That is precisely how a Kabal is born. To pro players difficulty of execution doesn't matter. They pick characters totally regardless of that. A casual player might be tempted to pick up Ermac or Cage because they are easy to play. But a pro will simply pick the character with highest overall potential no matter how easy or difficult it is to play, i.e Kabal, Lao, Cyrax.

I don't exactly understand your whole post but I got that first point. Character difficulty is not something you can pull into balance.

Relevant to this discussion:

Another video from ExtraCredits ( awesome channel btw , yall should subscribe and check them out ) that gives some insight on how to balance a game:

Tagging people if they wanna join the discussion @GGA 16 Bit @GGA Dizzy @Slips @Qwark28 @A F0xy Grampa @Sajam @Vulcan Hades @Eddy Wang @EGP Wonder_Chef @deg222 @anyonewhowantstodiscuss feel free to drop your opinion ( if ya want to )

 

[callMEcrazy]

Your forgetting one thing. Casual players also have to do with the success of a game, as much as pro-players. The studio needs all sources of income. To make a game that's difficult to play for the casual player would be a disaster. Once people found out about the difficulty the sales would drop, and we would see less support for the game.

The game HAS to have a mixture of both difficulty levels in order to be successful. Take Street Fighter as an example. E-Honda and Blanka have pretty easy to use move-sets, but are still in the game and not "Top-Tier", where as characters such as Seth or Rose are arguably more powerful but have harder move-sets to learn, yet they are both in the same game of witch is the most successful fighting game around at the moment.

Casual players don't care if the game is balanced !! They can't. A casual player can never use a character well enough to know which tier they belong to. To them Kabal and Kano are not that different, only a matter of preference. Hell, I categorize myself as kind of casual. I can't even do IAFs properly, let alone dash cancels. Character balance has absolutely nothing to do with players like me, and everything to do with pro players. I want balance because I like watching pro matches on youtube but that's it.

Difficulty and learning curve is of course important for casual players but they don't have to be part of balance, that's what I'm saying. You say casual players are important for success ? I totally agree. But what's important for casual players are graphics, story mode, difficulty, etc. Balance is something that only affects very advanced players.

Edit: what you said about SF....don't you see the problem ? Blanka and E-Honda don't see any competitive play. Seth and Rose (in particular) does.

 

[Mst]

Your forgetting one thing. Casual players also have to do with the success of a game, as much as pro-players. The studio needs all sources of income. To make a game that's difficult to play for the casual player would be a disaster. Once people found out about the difficulty the sales would drop, and we would see less support for the game.

The game HAS to have a mixture of both difficulty levels in order to be successful. Take Street Fighter as an example. E-Honda and Blanka have pretty easy to use move-sets, but are still in the game and not "Top-Tier", where as characters such as Seth or Rose are arguably more powerful but have harder move-sets to learn, yet they are both in the same game of witch is the most successful fighting game around at the moment.

Ussual casual players dont care if character x is hard to execute or not. Someone who plays the game every know and then will most likely not even reach the point where he could do the best bnbs for a Character even if he is easy to execute simply because casual. The thing which keeps casuals playing a game is if it is fun initially if you cant execute everything on the highest lvl or if the game gets fun when you reach that point.

I dont think the execution lvl should influence the balance of a Character, you should balance the game and Characters according to the highest lvl of play which are Pro Players and for them it shouldnt matter if Character X is hard to execute or not they will invest so much time it takes to get the execution down.

And so far the only thing i heard casual player complain about is the "link" system which feels for some of them like the fight the controller and not the enemy, which is universal to the entire game.

 

[GrandMasterson]

All NRS has to do to balance MKX is keep up with the game and update it accordingly, either through patches or the hotfix system. NRS is not some indie studio with limited money and manpower, they have the resources to support a game years after release. I see much smaller studios do it all the time. This is especially true with the hotfix system, which doesn't come with the red tape of releasing full console patches.

There's a theory I hear that NRS has their hands tied by WB on this issue, such as WB not permitting NRS to support their game with balance patches after a certain amount of time. I don't buy this at all because Injustice had 3 hotfixes since the last October patch, including the recent May hotfix that fixed Batgirl's infinite. Their hands don't look very tied up to me.

I realize uneven match-ups will always exist. That's the sacrifice you make for a diverse roster of character playstyles. However, there is no excuse for MKX to turn out like MK9 did. I hope NRS agrees with me.

 

[Art]

Relevant to this discussion:

Another video from ExtraCredits ( awesome channel btw , yall should subscribe and check them out ) that gives some insight on how to balance a game:

Tagging people if they wanna join the discussion @GGA 16 Bit @GGA Dizzy @Slips @Qwark28 @A F0xy Grampa @Sajam @Vulcan Hades @Eddy Wang @EGP Wonder_Chef @deg222 @anyonewhowantstodiscuss feel free to drop your opinion ( if ya want to )

@callMEcrazy @Msthttp://testyourmight.com/members/callmecrazy.29184/
See videos above, for what I was getting at...

 

[Vilén]

Patch out infinites and shit that otherwise doesn't function, then don't touch shit for like six months.

Then release a proper balance patch, then do it again six months later. Will work much better at actually balancing the game.

 

[JDM]

This is what all FGs should do. Tekken 6 was extremely balanced, every single character was viable, but it was arguably extremely boring. Every character played basically the same. Having too many universal moves dilutes a FG, in my opinion.

NRS are certainly not the best developers when it comes to balancing, but I feel like they were on the right track with Injustice. There aren't any Cyraxes (Cyrax's?), though there is a Kabal, but a lot more of the characters are viable.

I think the variations will end up like someone else said, one main variation for most characters and then two others to counter certain matchups. I just like that I might not have to change characters every other fight.

Tekken six was NOT balanced. What you smoking bruh. It was the Lars and Bob show.

Even if every character was "viable" in the game, Bob and Lars could win with the least amount of effort, therefore it was imbalanced since everyone picked them.

 

[Rathalos]

All NRS has to do to balance MKX is keep up with the game and update it accordingly, either through patches or the hotfix system. NRS is not some indie studio with limited money and manpower, they have the resources to support a game years after release. I see much smaller studios do it all the time. This is especially true with the hotfix system, which doesn't come with the red tape of releasing full console patches.

There's a theory I hear that NRS has their hands tied by WB on this issue, such as WB not permitting NRS to support their game with balance patches after a certain amount of time. I don't buy this at all because Injustice had 3 hotfixes since the last October patch, including the recent May hotfix that fixed Batgirl's infinite. Their hands don't look very tied up to me.

I realize uneven match-ups will always exist. That's the sacrifice you make for a diverse roster of character playstyles. However, there is no excuse for MKX to turn out like MK9 did. I hope NRS agrees with me.

Kinda related, two E3's ago, when they were demoing Zod to the public, Rip the Tekken guy from WNF/Levelupyourgame talked to Hector about patching, and Hector said they don't want to use the Hotfix system to balance characters because they can't change the in game frame data in a hotfix, so if they changed anything, the data would then be wrong.

I think that's a silly ass excuse, but it is what it is.

 

[Mst]

@callMEcrazy @Mst
See videos above, for what I was getting at...

Video 1: I dont think StarCraft 1/BW got ever a patch aiming at ling rushes (someone correct if im wrong). The thing which made ling rushes weak was that ppl learned how to counter it by blocking off chokes with buildings and having their ranged units (Marines/Goons) to protect them. Which was also the reason ling rushes where never that big a problem in SC2 because ppl just used what they knew would work from SC1.
The COD example is also not really that good, if a game uses random matchmaking without some kind elo system or something else to match ppl with simliar skill the problem is not the balance of the game but more a flawed matchmaking. If a Pro Player who plays a game daily for years gets matched with someone who just picked the game something is wrong and the Pro will most likely win 90% of the games (doesn't matter which game SC:BW, WC3, CS 1.6/Source/GO, SF4, MK whatever).

What most likely happens when you balance Characters according to there execution lvl (easy to execute Characters weaker than hard to execute Characters) is that every "easy" to execute Character which is weak falls out of potential Characters used by everyone playing at a high lvl because those ppl will put the time in learning how to execute the Character.
In my opinion the execution lvl shouldnt determine how strong a Character is. There should for sure Characters with different execution lvl be in the game but in perfect system all of them should be viable at the highest lvl. Another reason to balance the game on the highest lvl to play avaiable at this point is also that for weaker players (casuals) there is always the option to just get better even if it sounds hard to get around a matchup. Long term balancing would also be great because there is always the possibility that even 2-3 years after everyone through anything in the game got discoverd someone finds something which changes the balance of the game.

And i still stand by the point that the deciding factor if casual players gonna continue to play the game after a few weeks is if the game is fun from the start or gets fun when you are capable to execute everything the game has to offer. I think a good example is Dota the game is fun from the start away even if you dont know how to execute Orb Walking, Creep Block, Camp Block, Creep pulling, Tread switching, Animation cancelling .... perfectly the more you play the game and the more you try to get better and start to incoperate those things into your play the more layer of depths the game gets and i dont think its much different with most fighting games.

Video 2: I think Counter play is comparable with Counterpicking in fighting games every option in a game should have for some kind of counter option within the game but a single Character shouldnt have ideally all those option within is own moveset because that would make a single Character just way better than anything else. Kinda like the LoL example except that it easier to pick up another Hero in LoL than pick up another Character in fighting game, where no Hero should have all counter options to every option in the game within his own moveset.

I would be totally happy with a Fighting game which has only 6:4, 5:5 and 4:6 matchups and possible the number of 6:4 and 4:6 matchups even throughout the entire cast which would still give matchups which slightly favor Character X but not in a way that a single Character got out of 20 possible matchups 1 bad one (4:6 or worse) 10 5:5 ones and everything else 6:4 or better making the Character just simply by the numbers better than anything else in the game.

 

[TarkatanDentist]

Broken gameplay mechanics happens to be discovered even if later in any fighting game .... seems to be a stuff inherent to this kind of game ....

I respectfully disagree - a handful of fighting game series have managed to avoid broken gameplay mechanics entirely, such as Virtua Fighter and (since around 2008) Tekken. Of course, characters in those games tend to be much more homogeneous in terms of how they fight - with a more diverse cast like that of MK it would be much harder.

I think that 6-4 and 7-3 MUs are important and make a fighting game fun. Why would we wanna play a game full of 5-5s? Where is the fun? I personally love playing a 6-4 MU on my opponents favor, that forces me to learn to play better and find counter strategies etc.

Also having lets say a char beat another 6-4 and loses to another 7-3 makes it so people go to new chars and more chars will be played at a high level or online etc.

6-4 MUs, as I mentioned earlier, are pretty much unavoidable, and aren't a big problem. 7-3 MUs, on the other hand, are avoidable. With a cast the size of, say, MK9, there really shouldn't be any more than a dozen or so 7-3 MUs across the entire game. The fact that Sheeva has that many 3-7 or worse MUs on her own is testimony to how poorly balanced the game is. And speaking frankly, even a single MU worse than 3-7 is pretty poor balance-wise.

That said, I'm inclined to give NRS some benefit of the doubt, solely because the fighting system for MK9 was a pretty radical departure from any previous MK installment, and working with a new fighting system always makes balancing a lot harder (the same applies to Injustice even more so, since it's an entire new franchise). I won't be extending that to the next game, since they've had time to learn from their mistakes.

 

[NY-Shadow]

So as we read and watch everything about MKX we've sure heard the philosophy that the NRS team currently has on the variations , where counterplay meta between character styles will be a good part of the game and thinking about it i don't belive it's actually a bad way to create a good meta for the game.

Now don't get me wrong , saying "perfect imbalance" doesn't mean make every variation hard counter another , even making a game this way NRS will need a fine tuning of the mechanics / characters options but that's a concern we can't discuss right now as the game is not out nor we have a playable build.

What i want to discuss is do YOU actually like the game balanced this game or would you rather have a more generic movelist/playstyles/fixed strategies to ease matchups as close to even as they can be.

Do watch the video before commenting.

Discuss

This still doesn't explain Johnny Cage, Kabal, Cyrax, Kung Lao, Sonya and Kenshi. There have been no character counters for these at ANY skill level, that's why those are the only characters you still see today at the highest level gameplay and tournaments after the game has been out now like what, 3 years! No amount of strategizing or mathematical execution gameplay can be applied to NRS games because the brokeness is so infinite not even math or physics can solve the problems of NRS character balance issues. Unlike chess, if one could apply any sort of mathematical application to say MK9 character gameplay and win by strategizing and calculative decisions we would never see the same 5 characters win every tournament for the the past 3 years. Thats because no amount of strategizing or mathematical application can overcome the obstacle of plain old overpowered/broken character creation that have faster normals, faster recovery time, safer pushbacks and faster meter building, faster startup time on specials and normals, and better high-low/low-high mixup options.

The only thing that can truly make an NRS game like MK9 balanced is by low tier players having the ability to perform mental telepathy on an unsuspecting opponent to know what moves they are going to do before they do them. BTW, that ability is impossible unless you're professor X. lol

 

[Mechacide]

Tekken six was NOT balanced. What you smoking bruh. It was the Lars and Bob show.

Even if every character was "viable" in the game, Bob and Lars could win with the least amount of effort, therefore it was imbalanced since everyone picked them.

That's not what I regard as imbalance, that's down to player choice of who to pick, not which characters are technically better.

And I disagree that Lars took little effort, you had to be totally on point with his punishes. And there were plenty of other characters that were easy to use and plenty powerful: Alisa, Lili, Bruce, Bryan was easy enough without his Taunt stuff, Leo was easy to use as well. To be honest not many of the T6 characters were hard to use, the real skill came in movement and spacing and knowing what to punish and with what.

But the point is that the highest tier character (in my opinion, Bryan) was still only a 6-4 against the lowest tier character (Yoshimitsu). This is because the whole game is just footsies, so it's more about player competency.

 

[Peckapowa]

This still doesn't explain Johnny Cage, Kabal, Cyrax, Kung Lao, Sonya and Kenshi. There have been no character counters for these at ANY skill level, that's why those are the only characters you still see today at the highest level gameplay and tournaments after the game has been out now like what, 3 years! No amount of strategizing or mathematical execution gameplay can be applied to NRS games because the brokeness is so infinite not even math or physics can solve the problems of NRS character balance issues. Unlike chess, if one could apply any sort of mathematical application to say MK9 character gameplay and win by strategizing and calculative decisions we would never see the same 5 characters win every tournament for the the past 3 years. Thats because no amount of strategizing or mathematical application can overcome the obstacle of plain old overpowered/broken character creation that have faster normals, faster recovery time, safer pushbacks and faster meter building, faster startup time on specials and normals, and better high-low/low-high mixup options.

The only thing that can truly make an NRS game like MK9 balanced is by low tier players having the ability to perform mental telepathy on an unsuspecting opponent to know what moves they are going to do before they do them. BTW, that ability is impossible unless you're professor X. lol

Says there are no counters to cage, then proceeds to name 4 bad matchups including a 2-8, 3-7, bordlerline 3-7(sonya), and arguable 4-6, without even mentioning freddie

 

[Eldriken]

Says there are no counters to cage, then proceeds to name 4 bad matchups including a 2-8, 3-7, bordlerline 3-7(sonya), and arguable 4-6, without even mentioning freddie

Just disregard her posts.

 

[RoGE]

I don't agree with intentionally giving characters weaknesses to help balance, just because a character is great in one area doesn't mean they shouldn't be good in others. Give characters the options to be able to deal with various situations.

Look at Skullgirls for instance, that's pretty much how Mike Z balances his game and because of that, every character has the tools to compete with the top tier characters.

And yes it is possible to make characters that are decent in a lot of areas unique from each other. Another example of this would be Guilty Gear, where there's a lot of 5-5 match ups between characters that play completely different from each other and character who have unfavorable match ups can still win because of what the game system mechanics allow them to. There's all kinds of different tools available with meter, when you are blocking, when you land a hit etc.

I do agree with his other points however. It's honestly more of a preference imo, some people like the counter-pick style balance more.

 

[eolson3]

I see competitive players giving reasons for why they will lose matches, for a game that a couple dozen people have even touched. If you are losing to casuals, don't blame mechanics. A bad player would have to exploit a lot of these mechanics in order to beat a player who lives in the lab. In which case, 1) I guess they aren't a casual player, or 2) You aren't the mind reader that you think you are.

Source: I'm a bad player

 

[Rathalos]

One thing I've noticed about MK is that it has a lack of vertical attacks, like the shoryuken. For example, Kabal's character type has been able to dominate most 2d MK games he's been selectable in just by controlling horizontal attack space, horizontal ground space, and with air projectile.

They had some in Injustice, but they were kinda slow and not good enough to use on reaction, so they were pretty useless.

In X, Cassie, Raiden, Torr have like straight up dragon punches, they seem much faster, but we will have to see.
I don't see NRS implementing any kind of invincibility on startup though, so they will never be that crazy.

 

[Flagg]

Aside from just mathetical frame data, most 2d fighting games consist of balancing around controlling spaces imo:

air attack,
air projectile,
horizontal attack,
horizontal projectile,
vertical attack,
vertical projectile,
diagonal attack,
and diagonal projectile.

You can pick out which ones the strongest MK characters have, and you can figure that if any one character had a move for each of these categories they would be a master character.

One thing I've noticed about MK is that it has a lack of vertical attacks, like the shoryuken. For example, Kabal's character type has been able to dominate most 2d MK games he's been selectable in just by controlling horizontal attack space, horizontal ground space, and with air projectile.

Kabal has no diagonal attack; no diagonal projectile; and no vertical attack or vertical projectile.

MK, imo, seems to be balanced too much around controlling air space and horizontal space, which essentially gives novice players a common sense way to defend jump in with air control, and a simple path of attack with horizontal control. This, along with no trades, kills the back and forth element in their games, but makes them easier to move around in and get some kind of attack to hit.

Nice observations! Very few characters have diagonal attacks with the exception of Sindel, Kung Lao, CSZ, Sonya, Jade and Skarlet. Kabals biggest strength imo was the ridiculous iagb, simply because the recovery frame on them was ridiculous. If the projectile itself was slower or couldn't be fired until the first one exited the screen or even only could be fired at a higher arc, the character would be a lot of more balanced. I know people are gonna go on about his NMDC and how his buzzsaw catches teleports but the iagb was by far his best weapon. Ridiculous meter building. I know there was more broken stuff in the game then just Kabal but in time people would have adapted more. Even the IAGB isn't all powerful as it backs him into a corner, and anyone with decent rush down like Sonya can murder him in the corner.

 

[Mechacide]

Edit: what you said about SF....don't you see the problem ? Blanka and E-Honda don't see any competitive play. Seth and Rose (in particular) does.

You clearly haven't heard of Mike Ross