Petition to let custom variation in competitive play MK11

[CrimsonShadow]

You shouldn't look at them as variations, look at them as moves. Now we have like 8-10 of them, and you also have the possibility to make them cost more or less slots.

To be honest I think it's easier to balance than variations.

There's no different. Combining moves and strings gives you dozens of possible variations. All this does is give you more options for variations to create before the match, increasing the number of variations exponentially.

 

[Xelz]

I don't believe in petitions, sorry. I think they're silly as most of them are useless and won't really change anything.

Offering feedback can be done in better ways.

Like, for example, discussing on this forum

I get the feeling that NRS reads TYM a fair amount, and I wouldn't be shocked if the debates in this thread grabbed their attention. Lets hope so, it was a good discussion.

 

[NothingPersonal]

If they're going to be doing a tournament series, then I think it's better they do the first "season" without custom variations. That would make it easier to keep a consistent set of rules.

No problem with that. MKX and Inj2 were 2 of 3 before they went 3 of 5. The idea is for them to just be available for competitive play. Anyone could decide later if they are viable in tournament or not.

 

[SGX]

I think it would be a very good idea to add an option called "allow custom variations in tournament mode on / off" to allow people to run tournaments with custom variations and not have to worry about whether augments are enabled or not

 

[NothingPersonal]

They also said that they plan on adding more in the future though, not that I'm complaining.

Didn't hear of that. Still, if they turn out busted just ignore'em competitively. I just want it to be decided by the players and not the devs. They'll still try to balance them properly hopefully.

 

[ShepherdOfFire]

I tend to disagree with the "petition", because of obvious balance reasons, but I have to admit that I'd like to see the result of implementing customs variations into tournaments.

Let's take MKX : When you look at the tournaments, most of the time the same variation is picked, obviously the one that is considered as the most powerful : Hollywood/Cassie, Hellfire/Scorpion, GrandMaster/Sub-Zero etc...
But if the system of custom variation was added to MKX, it would be an absolute nightmare to balance. Let's imagine that a custom variation in MKX includes 3 variation-exclusive moves, along with their EX versions, added to the base moveset of a character. I'm not a pro-player, but I'll pick characters that has, in my opinion, at least two tournament viable variations and try to create one extremely powerful variation (I don't remember all the in-game names, but you'll understand anyways) :
Sonya :
1st : Military Stance (Covert Ops)
2nd : Stun grenade
3rd : Grenade reload

Kotal :
1 : OH sword attack
2 : Low sword attack
3 : Obsidian/Crystal totem OR Command Grab (Sun God)

Sub-Zero :
1 : Ice clone
2 : OH hammer (cryomancer)
3 : Command grab (cryomancer)

I could go on, but you understand what I tried to illustrate. My custom variations are probably not optimized, but you got an idea of how it could make the game unplayable. Yes, MKX's variation system is not meant to be tweaked that way, but think about it : Some people think that variations from MKX weren't very interesting because only one was played over the two others most of the time. But, if you let the players picking a custom variation in tournament, people will eventually find the most optimized combination of specials and... almost everybody will use this one. So the problem will remain the same. Some players will say that not including the custom variations would be a missed opportunity, but if this opportunity turns out to be negative on the competitive point of view, that is not a good thing at all, both for the community and NRS. They took the safe choice to exclude custom variations, and I understand it.

 

[Xelz]

Some people think that variations from MKX weren't very interesting because only one was played over the two others most of the time. But, if you let the players picking a custom variation in tournament, people will eventually find the most optimized combination of specials and... almost everybody will use this one.

That's exactly what happens in many other games/genres that allow customization. Take MtG for example. A new set introduces hundreds of new cards and trillions of possible deck builds, but ultimately the community discovers a handful of optimized decks and you see the same 3-5 decks played over and over again. What looks like a huge amount of variety on the surface devolves into a static, homogenized experience.

What game designers have discovered recently is that the best way to compel variety is to "fix" the set of customized options, so that one option or set of options has a key strength, but also a defined weakness, and players must choose between one defined set of strengths/weakness vs another. (Keyforge is the latest iteration of this for randomized card games). I think this is what NRS wanted to accomplish with the variation system - specifically to let a character loyalist stick with a character while adapting the character's strength and weaknesses to match-ups. But the execution of the variation system missed the mark, often leading to optimal variations in all or most match-ups for a given character, leaving the other two variations un-played competitively.

 

[Megax Rocker]

I support this.

In order for it to work, we and NRS need to not allow ourselves to be held back by issues that can actually be worked around with creative thinking.

Like someone said earlier, it's like restricting 3v3 game and banning combinations, except this is more manageable via slot cost.

People fear it for messing match ups, but how is that different from team building in 3v3 games?

It's not that big of an issue honestly, innovation is nice.