(Rant warning) Balance issues

[ForeverKlone]

First of all I'd like to apologize if the image is as small as my pride right now
Kay now to the main issue. Stephanie (16Bit) states that Kitana is FINE AS SHE IS. We all know this ain't true. She's been one of the most lacklustre characters maybe since day 1. She got hit so hard that now, more than a year later and 1 billion tweaks to her moveset, she is still no where near as good. And in the ultimate patch, they actually decided to NERF HER, to be specific, the only variation of her that is worth playing (v2).
So my question is: WHY? Why do they even bother to nerfed her when her kit is already flawed? She has no mixups, a mid string that requieres full commitment, average (or belove average) damage, ... Basically nothing going for her. Yall be thinking this is another Kitana main rant but I don't even bother touching the character lol, I'm just completely perplexed by NRS' balance decision. We had seen this before with Shao Khan. He was already bad, then they decided to "buff" his key mid in f3, but they made it special cancellable, where the problem is the gigantic gap that f34 possesses, furthermore they made the string unsafe, making this a lose lose situation. Basically every option coming from f3 is unsafe. Then there's Raijin Raiden and a handful of other characters that gets the same tweaks. Meanwhile, with customs in tournaments, we are now getting even more Jacquis, who was basically untouched, and not just normal Jacqui but all 3 variations stuffed in one Jacqui. She was let go for free this patch with a nerf that barely affects her, while Kitana, being no where as close to her, got nerfs?
Not to mention the 4fr buff to wakeups. Okis are basically eliminated from the game. I can't even approach people on the ground without the fear of being interrupted by any buttons at the opponent's disposal. Changes to pokes are great but d3/4 mashing is still there, and throws got the cutest nerfs I've seen in history.
At this point I'm questioning myself whether or not NRS actually listens to the people who actually play the game?

 

[Raider]

I mean i understand your frustration as Kitana player but there are characters in the game that are worse than her and still got nerfed or not drastically changed.

Stephanie said that they have all the data and statistics for every character in the game and that majority of the characters that players are requesting buffs for are doing "fine".

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Meanwhile, with customs in tournaments, we are now getting even more Jacquis, who was basically untouched, and not just normal Jacqui but all 3 variations stuffed in one Jacqui.

I haven't seen a Jacqui in Top 8 (or even Top 16, really) or top player exhibitions since the patch. We ran a tournament the week before with customs already unlocked, and Jacqui was nowhere to be found there either. Most good players have either dropped her, or just aren't getting anywhere with her right now.

Jueks seems like he quit the game (at least temporarily), Rewind moved on to Liu, Semij is playing Mileena and Cassie. Not sure about this increase in Jacqui play.

 

[Metin]

Kitana is not my main but i do like to use her fan-fare variation sometimes. Those whiff issues are real and i guess the main issue is weird inputs there cos you have to press 31 after B2 otherwise second hit doesn't come up by only pressing on 3. same for f2 you have to press 34 after it otherwise second doesn't come up. These situations makes you vulnerable against whiffs on wakeup jumps, short hops etc. Many character has weird inputs in this game, for example;

Erron Black; 21212 only come up if you press 1+2 twice after 21. Why? No one knows. That is also costs full punish if it whiffs on jumps.

Erron Black; b222 you have to press full input if you want to cancel it on second hit. it also whiffs on jumps.

Liu Kang; b124 same situation but he is not that vulnerable on whiffs.

Jade; b343 same. Not that vulnerable on whiffs.

These weird inputs doesn't makes them harder to perform, only causing punish to death situation that you didn't deserve at all.

 

[BRAZILIAN SHEEP]

There are several reasons for a person to not use a character, not just only "he / she is bad competitively".
At the end of the day is a game, and there are a lot of options to have fun.

 

[Onryoki]

I mean I understand the frustration from a competitive POV, but people act like the character is unplayable and isn’t fun to play. If you don’t enjoy Kitana in MK11 despite her being your favourite character, pick up somebody else. If Ermac was shit and I really wouldn’t enjoy using him, I’d pick up someone else.

In the end, you can still enjoy the game or the character. If you don’t, that’s on you. Clearly they’re not intending on “fixing” her, so it’s best to find some character you do enjoy using, or just stop whining and accept how Kitana is now and work with what you got.

 

[Dogeofthesea]

They are literally making excuses for an unfinished product

 

[ForeverKlone]

I mean i understand your frustration as Kitana player but there are characters in the game that are worse than her and still got nerfed or not drastically changed.

Stephanie said that they have all the data and statistics for every character in the game and that majority of the characters that players are requesting buffs for are doing "fine".

Kitana is the clearest example of what I was referring to. Were she to be "fine" then what are the nerfs even for? Why can't they just focus on weaker characters like Shao Khan or Kollector, but they have to target characters like Kitana, while she's not even near the top tiers. As if they didn't even bother testing before the final release.

 

[ForeverKlone]

I haven't seen a Jacqui in Top 8 (or even Top 16, really) or top player exhibitions since the patch. We ran a tournament the week before with customs already unlocked, and Jacqui was nowhere to be found there either. Most good players have either dropped her, or just aren't getting anywhere with her right now.

Jueks seems like he quit the game (at least temporarily), Rewind moved on to Liu, Semij is playing Mileena and Cassie. Not sure about this increase in Jacqui play.

Idk about you but in my locals Jacquis are all over the place, and my friends (who's not from my local but do play competitively) are switching to Jacqui to be at least a pocket character. The patch hits quite recent so people are discovering things, but I can assure that in about a month you'll see what I'm talking about. But still, it's just an example about top tiers barely being twitch. (Maybe except for liu kang and geras)

 

[M2Dave]

And in the ultimate patch, they actually decided to NERF HER, to be specific, the only variation of her that is worth playing (v2).

The Kitana community, at least on TYM, asked razors to be normalized so that Kitana can play a more traditional style. NRS was happy to oblige. Highborn used to be my main variation, but I am not upset because the majority of Kitana players requested Kitana to play this way.

As far as overall balance is concerned, I do not believe the central focus of the most recent patch was balance. A subsequent balance patch is likely to be released at a later time to fix any unbalanced and underwhelming custom moves.

 

[NeroOps]

Kitana is fine and has been fine for a while now. Here’s some advice learn and adjust to the character if not drop her and find someone else to play. Isn’t that what most people do anyway? Just admit you want kitana to be cheap asf so you don’t struggle more than you already do during high level play.

 

[Raider]

We've seen once what 16 Bit did with Kitana in MKX. Its good that he has (or so he claims) no power over this matter.

As M2Dave said "As far as overall balance is concerned, I do not believe the central focus of the most recent patch was balance. A subsequent balance patch is likely to be released at a later time to fix any unbalanced and underwhelming custom moves"

It's she/her.

 

[Onryoki]

We've seen once what 16 Bit did with Kitana in MKX. Its good that he has (or so he claims) no power over this matter.

As M2Dave said "As far as overall balance is concerned, I do not believe the central focus of the most recent patch was balance. A subsequent balance patch is likely to be released at a later time to fix any unbalanced and underwhelming custom moves"

He? 16 bit is a transwoman, is it that hard to respect the fact that 16 bit tries to live her life as a woman and wants to be acknowledged and referred to as a woman? This is straight up disrespectful. She changed her name to Stephanie, looks like a woman and acts like a woman. Referring to her as She and her isn’t that hard.

 

[Marlow]

As if they didn't even bother testing before the final release.

I get that this type of comment comes from frustration, but I still think it's pretty unfair to make. It's easy as consumers to sit back and say "why isn't thing X being fixed?" and just write everything we don't like off as devs being lazy, but we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, we don't know the actual amount of work being put into this.

A lot of hard work and thought goes into making a video game. The reality is there's only so many testers and programmers, and a set amount of available hours. IGN has a cool series where Game Developers watch people speed run their games, and one of the most common comments that always gets said is "yeah, we knew that glitch was in there but we just didn't have enough time to get to it".

Long story short, people are working hard, people are doing their best. I think we should at least respect that and not be so quick to assume a lack of testing or laziness on anyone's part.

 

[Zer0_h0ur]

The Kitana community, at least on TYM, asked razors to be normalized so that Kitana can play a more traditional style. NRS was happy to oblige. Highborn used to be my main variation, but I am not upset because the majority of Kitana players requested Kitana to play this way.

As far as overall balance is concerned, I do not believe the central focus of the most recent patch was balance. A subsequent balance patch is likely to be released at a later time to fix any unbalanced and underwhelming custom moves.

For real.

As a Kitana dabbler, I still cannot believe how much more you guys complain for more buffs. She's gotten helped in every patch and they de-clawed the version people like Dave and me played lol. She's obviously not the best or top 5 but she's still really good and far from bottom of the barrel.

 

[Raider]

For real.

As a Kitana dabbler, I still cannot believe how much more you guys complain for more buffs. She's gotten helped in every patch and they de-clawed the version people like Dave and me played lol. She's obviously not the best or top 5 but she's still really good and far from bottom of the barrel.

This is what bothers me the most. It's even worse on social media. Those ppl are so loud and i don't want to say annoying... but they are. I don't like generalizing but it's the truth!
We have characters that are much worse than some others, for example Skarlet, D'Vorah, SK, Jade... and you barely hear them complaining. They stick to what they have!

 

[Tony at Home]

There's nothing that can be done to please Kitana mains at this point. They should just tune out the noise.

"But guys, TrueUnderDawg says she needs 350 meterless kawmbos to be viable"

 

[Marlow]

There's nothing that can be done to please Kitana mains at this point. They should just tune out the noise.

"But guys, TrueUnderDawg says she needs 350 meterless kawmbos to be viable"

He'd probably only say that if Rooflemonger or somebody else said it first.

 

[Marlow]

This is what bothers me the most. It's even worse on social media. Those ppl are so loud and i don't want to say annoying... but they are. I don't like generalizing but it's the truth!

Every character community's got some, unfortunately. I swear there's like 3-4 people in the Raiden General Discussion who don't make a single comment for months, but somehow always show up right after a patch complaining about "why isn't storm cell safe buff Raiden".

 

[Espio]

I shouldn't have to be saying this @Saltea Moonspell but this is a very simple concept, it's the golden rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated. You don't even have to mention her gender in your posts because it is irrelevant. You cannot claim to be respectful when the topic is about respecting someone's identity and choosing not to do it. That's nonsensical.

If you don't want anybody regulating you, you could easily leave her gender out of the conversation and just use her tag.


Please do not reply to this post, I don't want anything further said on the topic. Kitana balance should have been the only topic of discourse anyway.

 

[John_NX]

I haven't seen a Jacqui in Top 8 (or even Top 16, really) or top player exhibitions since the patch. We ran a tournament the week before with customs already unlocked, and Jacqui was nowhere to be found there either. Most good players have either dropped her, or just aren't getting anywhere with her right now.

Jueks seems like he quit the game (at least temporarily), Rewind moved on to Liu, Semij is playing Mileena and Cassie. Not sure about this increase in Jacqui play.

People are still, and will be experimenting with other characters. I've fought a Jacqui a few days ago with her projectile and leap and let me tell that it was borderline broken. This patch didn't fix/nerf Jacqui. If anything, it made her stronger

 

[Marlow]

Stephanie (16Bit) states that Kitana is FINE AS SHE IS. We all know this ain't true. She's been one of the most lacklustre characters maybe since day 1.

I don't play her, but my understanding was that she started out somewhere in the bottom half, then slowly got buffs, and now she's somewhere in the middle or upper middle of the pack in terms of balance. She's clearly not in that top 5 OP category, but she's also clearly not in the lackluster category. That category is reserved for Shao Kahn, party of 1.

 

[John_NX]

Coming from a kitana main myself, I understand Stephanie's viewpoint. I ALSO don't mind her dial-in mids whiffing if someone jumps because I have other ways to counter this. What are these options? F222, B2, B2 Upwards fan toss and b131. You have to observe your opponent and see what they do. If they tend to jump a lot f222 them to death or just jump punch into instant air fan.

What I'd like to see kitana being given (and what I think she truly needs) is better backwards movement and an 11F b1. That's all she needs and will be okay.

 

[xKhaoTik]

I’m a Kitana main and I disagree with this entirely.

In the beginning, yes it was annoying using b2 and they would jump out, especially on oki, but as time progressed, I learned how to adapt and create strategy, as Stephanie said. You shouldn’t just be throwing out b2. The string doesn’t work like that. Use it after a jump in punch, for a punish, after razors on hit or after hitting with d4. B1 is the string you want to use as it solves the problem of people jumping, especially if you have up fan involved.

Speaking of Up Fan (and this isn’t directly towards you btw), I don’t understand why so many people are crying about the nerf. You can still toss is faster than ground fan/low fan and it recovers faster than both, it still controls the air (which is something Kitana is known for), and you can still convert from it from nearly full screen. Not only that, the bnb that we were doing with up fan when we found out that customs were coming is still viable. It just takes very slight execution to do. It’s also more damaging than her previous j2x2 bnb. So I’m really having a hard time understanding how it was “nerfed to hell” when whatever it did pre patch, it still does now.

Overall, Kitana is in a much better spot than she was previously. We got the S2 buff we asked for, we got highborn nerfed so we can use classic Kitana, we got better pokes, we got air control. Is it the Kitana that we know? No, but for this type of game, she’s fine. Just give her a backdash and we’d be golden.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

People are still, and will be experimenting with other characters. I've fought a Jacqui a few days ago with her projectile and leap and let me tell that it was borderline broken. This patch didn't fix/nerf Jacqui. If anything, it made her stronger

I also think Jacqui is still really good -- I'm just disputing the notion that everybody is currently playing Jacqui all of a sudden. I've seen a ton more Sub/Kotal/Mileena/etc. among good players and a lot less Jacqui these days.