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Playing injustice 2 characters is liking playing varitionless MKX characters.

And overhead / low combo starter for each character. And a run button. And some gore.
Your obviously instiuating that I want this game to turn into MKX. This is false. I'm happy that not every character has stupid high/low combo starters like Flash.

I just want some more depth.

Imagine what gear moves would do for this game...

1. Character match-ups would change dramatically depending on the moves choosen.
- This is something people have continuously complained about. That top level play is all about counter-picking. Well having gear moves might allow you to overcome a bad character matchup simply by swapping out a move instead of choosing a different character. This would be a more welcome alternative to having to learn a different character for people who have loyalty to one character.

2. They would be more variation in terms of play-style.
- Gear moves might allow a rush down character to zone or a zoning character to rush down. Having the same character being able to play different ways would allow people more freedom to be able to play the character they like without feeling like they are locked into playing a certain way that they might not enjoy.

3. It would make people theory craft more.
- People underestimate how important this is for games. A healthy debate on what is the optimal way to play a character is one of the keys to creating and keeping interest in a game. As it is right now, people have pretty much figured out what to do with most characters. Adding gear moves would create a whole new dimension to discuss strategy. Like "What are the best gear moves to use against Batman? Or what about Ivy? What about an Ivy who chooses gear move X instead of move Y" ect.

4. It would open up possibilities for different combos, pressure, resets and everything else.
- Right now the gear moves are under explored. No one but the super casual use them. If they were added to competitive play people would discover new combo routes, oki possibilities, pressure possibilities. This would mean more things to explore for people that love to find out things in training mode, more eye-catching displays for combo-video makers to show the world, and a more pleasurable viewing experience for people who have already seen everything this game has to offer from a competitive stand-point.
 

Marlow

Premium Supporter
Premium Supporter
I think it'd be interesting. Might run into some balance issues, but I think it'd be worth it for the added creativity and hype.
 

gitblame

Noob
Your obviously instiuating that I want this game to turn into MKX. This is false. I'm happy that not every character has stupid high/low combo starters like Flash.

I just want some more depth.

Imagine what gear moves would do for this game...

1. Character match-ups would change dramatically depending on the moves choosen.
- This is something people have continuously complained about. That top level play is all about counter-picking. Well having gear moves might allow you to overcome a bad character matchup simply by swapping out a move instead of choosing a different character. This would be a more welcome alternative to having to learn a different character for people who have loyalty to one character.

2. They would be more variation in terms of play-style.
- Gear moves might allow a rush down character to zone or a zoning character to rush down. Having the same character being able to play different ways would allow people more freedom to be able to play the character they like without feeling like they are locked into playing a certain way that they might not enjoy.

3. It would make people theory craft more.
- People underestimate how important this is for games. A healthy debate on what is the optimal way to play a character is one of the keys to creating and keeping interest in a game. As it is right now, people have pretty much figured out what to do with most characters. Adding gear moves would create a whole new dimension to discuss strategy. Like "What are the best gear moves to use against Batman? Or what about Ivy? What about an Ivy who chooses gear move X instead of move Y" ect.

4. It would open up possibilities for different combos, pressure, resets and everything else.
- Right now the gear moves are under explored. No one but the super casual use them. If they were added to competitive play people would discover new combo routes, oki possibilities, pressure possibilities. This would mean more things to explore for people that love to find out things in training mode, more eye-catching displays for combo-video makers to show the world, and a more pleasurable viewing experience for people who have already seen everything this game has to offer from a competitive stand-point.
Now you probably see you should start with that post instead of 3 sentence rant which encorauged me to play mind reader.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Your obviously instiuating that I want this game to turn into MKX. This is false. I'm happy that not every character has stupid high/low combo starters like Flash.

I just want some more depth.

Imagine what gear moves would do for this game...

1. Character match-ups would change dramatically depending on the moves choosen.
- This is something people have continuously complained about. That top level play is all about counter-picking. Well having gear moves might allow you to overcome a bad character matchup simply by swapping out a move instead of choosing a different character. This would be a more welcome alternative to having to learn a different character for people who have loyalty to one character.

2. They would be more variation in terms of play-style.
- Gear moves might allow a rush down character to zone or a zoning character to rush down. Having the same character being able to play different ways would allow people more freedom to be able to play the character they like without feeling like they are locked into playing a certain way that they might not enjoy.

3. It would make people theory craft more.
- People underestimate how important this is for games. A healthy debate on what is the optimal way to play a character is one of the keys to creating and keeping interest in a game. As it is right now, people have pretty much figured out what to do with most characters. Adding gear moves would create a whole new dimension to discuss strategy. Like "What are the best gear moves to use against Batman? Or what about Ivy? What about an Ivy who chooses gear move X instead of move Y" ect.

4. It would open up possibilities for different combos, pressure, resets and everything else.
- Right now the gear moves are under explored. No one but the super casual use them. If they were added to competitive play people would discover new combo routes, oki possibilities, pressure possibilities. This would mean more things to explore for people that love to find out things in training mode, more eye-catching displays for combo-video makers to show the world, and a more pleasurable viewing experience for people who have already seen everything this game has to offer from a competitive stand-point.
‘Top level play is all about counterpicking’ is one of those things people just say without actually watching Top 8s or looking at the results.

We just had a couple threads on how successful Hayatei is as a loyalist, but then somebody who didn’t watch will come in and complain the next week about how only counterpickers do well.

As far as the game being figured out.. Not even close. Remember when Ivy wasn’t viable or worth playing before Big D? Or Canary wasn’t supposed to be able to handle zoners? As every week goes by, players who are still in the lab prove that the community still has a ton to learn about the meta.
 
‘Top level play is all about counterpicking’ is one of those things people just say without actually watching Top 8s or looking at the results.

We just had a couple threads on how successful Hayatei is as a loyalist, but then somebody who didn’t watch will come in and complain the next week about how only counterpickers do well.

As far as the game being figured out.. Not even close. Remember when Ivy wasn’t viable or worth playing before Big D? Or Canary wasn’t supposed to be able to handle zoners? As every week goes by, players who are still in the lab prove that the community still has a ton to learn about the meta.
Im not trying to say that top level play is all counter-picking. But obviously thats an opinion a lot of people have, including some top players. Regardless of how true it is, i think having gear moves would allow characters to overcome what would traditionally be a bad matchup which would be a great for character loyalist.

And I also do not believe the game is fully figure out. But it is probably 90% figured out. Could there be some tech that arises in the next year that changing a character's viability? Sure? But I think we can both say that its highly unlikely that a tier list a year from now is going to look drastically different that one right now. Maybe one or two characters get labeled better or worse than they were previously thought to be. But unless a major patch happens I think most characters strengths, weaknesses, and tier placement are probably going to remain the same.

However, if gear moves are added then everyone who would have to reevaluate their character. Thats one of the cool things about balance patches. How has the meta changed now? But unlike past balance patches where only 5 or so characters might get changes...everyone has gear moves and so everyone regardless of which characters they play would have to do some reevaluating.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
However, if gear moves are added then everyone who would have to reevaluate their character. Thats one of the cool things about balance patches. How has the meta changed now? But unlike past balance patches where only 5 or so characters might get changes...everyone has gear moves and so everyone regardless of which characters they play would have to do some reevaluating.
The company themselves stated that the gear moves are just for kicks and aren't actually designed for proper competitive-level play. It'd be a mess.
 

Marinjuana

Up rock incoming, ETA 5 minutes
hot take: the injustice 2 roster is 10 times more interesting then mkx.
Agreed, in terms of gameplay, I find dramatically more depth in Injustice 2's roster. They don't have as many strings or even combo paths usually but there's more to how they play neutral, wakeup/oki games, etc. MKX has some cool characters(just talking gameplay), but it doesn't have as many super unique characters like Grodd, Brainiac, Atom and so on.

the circlejerk is gunna come down on you hard but there's a lot of truth to this
So brave of him to speak the truth! :DOGE

Seriously, what circlejerk? Half the discussion about the game on this site is negative. The other half is people being indifferent or positive about it.

I do wish that a few abilities were included to add some more pizazz, but I really think the meta is still evolving. People aren't going to find a bunch of game changing tech but people are getting better at finding crossups situations, covering wakeups while maintaining oki, unique answers for spacing situations, etc. The depth is there, you just aren't going to find "dirt" in this game like you would in MKX, though it definitely still has that crazy NRS setplay factor.

A sort of "Hyper Fighting" update of the game would be pretty awesome though.
 

Obly

Ambiguous world creator
I really like the idea in theory, for a lot of the reasons you mention. Variations add more strategic depth to the characters, shake up the meta, revitalize interest in the game, all of that. Maybe the latter is most appealing; this game is so cool, it's just tragic to see how quickly it shuffled off center stage and is already becoming fringe.

Definitely some problems with it though. Even as a new player, I can see how some of the abilities would blow up the existing balance in competitive play. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be chaotic and might break the current game just as much as revitalize it. Sure, the devs should rebalance the abilities as you say, but no doubt it would still kick off a prolonged need for more patching, more fixes--so how long would it take before it got back to feeling like a fair and balanced game again? (And how much complaining does NRS want to put up with in that time??)

It also seems like NRS is kind of hemmed in by the gear system they created. You're talking about unlocking all the abilities for everyone, which might not be seen as fair for the players who grinded for weeks or months to get them the long way (although, yeah, it seems pretty meh to have unlocked the abilities but barely be able to use them).

Ehh... I'm torn. I've gotta believe there's still plenty of untapped depth in the game--it's only 1.5 years old (a lot of folks still enjoy playing and exploring Vampire Savior, and that's over 20 years old, with no character variations). As others have said, the pro players are still shaking up the "known" meta now.

And if you're bored with your main and looking for variety, why not just learn a new character? You can't tell me you've mastered them all...
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
So brave of him to speak the truth! :DOGE

Seriously, what circlejerk? Half the discussion about the game on this site is negative. The other half is people being indifferent or positive about it.
The circlejerk where TYM doesn't like criticism to their current game and usually dogpiles on someone who makes a thread like this often til a mod locks it
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
As far as the game being figured out.. Not even close. Remember when Ivy wasn’t viable or worth playing before Big D? Or Canary wasn’t supposed to be able to handle zoners? As every week goes by, players who are still in the lab prove that the community still has a ton to learn about the meta.
The people saying that shit were not the people who had the game figured out, they just parroted other players they perceive as better or the groupthink, until such stuff becomes "common knowledge " that nobody really knows about. Plenty of people were aware of Canary's strengths even if the downplay squad for Canary was militant as hell on here.

I'm not saying everything has been figured out or whatever either, just that I think the example given is of the sort of people who will never have anything figured out ever
 

Marinjuana

Up rock incoming, ETA 5 minutes
Another thing too I'll say, I think they made mistakes with gear mode. It's a casual mode where you need to grind out for hours and hours to be able to get your character to a competitive level. So it becomes a mode that's really for non-casuals who need to use cheap moves and stats to win or just people who enjoy that whole sort of thing. I think if the mode wasn't so RNG based and so dependent on stats and grinding then it would be more worth playing even if the gear moves could be silly. It's an aspect of the game that the competitive community doesn't care about and doesn't seem to work for casuals outside of the appeal of the loot.

The circlejerk where TYM doesn't like criticism to their current game and usually dogpiles on someone who makes a thread like this often til a mod locks it
I don't know how you could post on this site for as long as you have and have this opinion TBH. Not sure what thread you are talking about but it's so common to see criticism of NRS games on this site.
 
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jcbowie

...more deadly than the dawn.
I agree with this insofar as I believe the gear mechanic's implementation was a massive mistake and locking all those customizable moves into non-competitive mode is why the competitive game feels stale so early in I2's cycle. To me it feels like NRS thought they needed a way to make balancing easier for themselves after struggling with it previously, so they dumbed everything down a bit.

Still didn't care for variation system.
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
If anything, some characters in I2 have more diverse tools than what some MKX variations had.

I see some people here comparing I2 characters with variationless MKX characters, but I think it's unfair. Comparing to what I still remember from that game... Bane without grab and elbow, Flash without trait - that's how it would be if that was the case.

...and while we are at it, half of those moves would've been a strictly inferior to shit from other variations, but with different flavour, but that's another topic.
 

Parasurama

Dragon
I think they planned to use gear abilities early on but considered it would too unbalanced. Therefore it was considered and if they plan to extend the life span of the game they may consider it again.

It is what it is... Injustice is a good game.
I think they should have added something similar to brutalities or those finishes in DBFZ (with so much lore available in DC).
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
I don't know how you could post on this site for as long as you have and have this opinion TBH. Not sure what thread you are talking about but it's so common to see criticism of NRS games on this site.
Happens all the time, I'll tag you the next time I see it how's that sound