I've been off the game for awhile now and I've kinda dipped on the community but I still linger, maybe cause I'm hoping somehow to get my passion back for this again. I still like to listen to podcasts and discussions about the game, and in doing so I just can't help but be frustrated lol.
The current talking point really seems to be, the problem of people who have legit criticisms about MK11 versus people who just hate the game cause they suck at fighting games and will always bitch. I hate a lot of the dialogue around this topic, because it's like, NRS should be smart enough and informed enough to know who is a salty dumbass and who isn't. There is a lot of attempts to COMPLETELY absolve NRS of any responsibility with this shit here and it's very irritating to watch. Obviously there's salty people who will never be happy with anything if it isn't involving their character getting buffed to high heaven and results in them getting free wins, but it should be a pretty big judgement on NRS that they are theoretically not able to discern between the two.
Here's the thing, there are several criticisms of this game that have been consistent even from the fucking beta that NRS has refused to address in any kind of impactful meaningful way.
1: Breakaway does not carry sufficient risk for what it gives you. We've all been saying since day one, if you weren't gonna remove this, you should be absolutely able to murder somebody for having the read on a breakaway. Getting to escape a combo, the penalty for a really bad error in the scope of a fighting game, is a HUGE reward. The fact NRS's only response to this was a half assed clearly untested measure that isn't equally accessible to everyone in a combo situation and is also extremely imbalanced in it's reward is absurd to me and I think to many others. For the record, in my world, everyone would get full combos for reading breakaways. You should explode.
2: The wakeup system also gives too many options at not enough risk for the situation you're putting your opponent in. It is universally considered and has been since the beta that people have too much power for being knocked down. This is a concern NRS just doesn't want to address. I really think a lot of the problems with this system could be solved by simply giving you something like a 25% damage bonus for whiff/block punishing a roll or an U2 or U3, or you create KB's that will work every single time on a roll/wakeup attack.
3: Fatal blow, and how particularly full screen fatal blows completely shut down the game in a lot of cases and give the loser an inordinate amount of power that completely slides the decision making power completely in their favor. This CONSISTENTLY is leading to a completely unsatisfying end user experience, it's a simultaneous button input for unbreakable armored usually fast as fuck 32% minimum, 40+ off any string usually, with no execution requirement so you might screw it up in the clutch. Fatal blow, even when it isn't one of the full screen ones, FUNDAMENTALLY changes the very nature of the game and how it's played AND it comes back after 10 seconds if you weren't successful the first time? I mean, I think everyone knew to begin with that if they had done any sort of testing, that armor startup at launch would not have been what it was.
4: Anti airs are almost non-existent still, but the anti airs that do exist almost entirely shut down jumping even in situations where traditionally the opponent would get a jump in for conditioning you appropriately in neutral. Not enough of a middle ground here. Things like low profiling crouch poke anti airs should not exist because they allow you to make mistakes in neutral and STILL get the anti air.
I and many others have suggested many fixes of these, but all of this has been met with everything from the shallow "stop crying" defense to the obscenely delusional "you want the game to be something entirely different" even though no one is trying to just get these mechanics altogether removed. Well, I HAVE said Breakaway should be removed but like, if we have to deal with it, giving it more severe consequences if read doesn't make the game not MK11.
I also think this points to the real main root of MK11 is that the game just seems designed to always keep the loser competitive, not even mentioning things like how flawless blocking in it's current implementation literally makes it so there is no such thing as a bad decision on block in theory which also means the strategy of the game becomes significantly diminished. It's not only boring and shallow, the GAME, not essentially the player, is constantly feeding the guy at disadvantage every option in the world. The game has no gradient of consequence. This makes the game unsatisfying even when you're winning in most cases. I feel like this entire aspect of the games philosophy is just super downplayed right now. I don't think this has to be what defines MK11, but a lot of people seem to like this about the game which is discouraging. This IS MK11 to them.
Also the myriad of whiffing issues, a thing NRS just can't seem to overcome but I feel like it's really bad in this game and inexcusable just because of time and place. Half or more of the casts jab fucking whiff on a crouching Johnny. How can you make the argument NRS actually gives a shit when things like this are still around?
Sorry, I'm rambling and up late. I just wanted to type lol. This isn't even discussing how bad the games single player content and structure is or how this game was actually stifled by NRS's definition of supporting it (they're actually bad at making a product that makes money, I could go on on how they could both exponentiate the money made from this game while justifying actively supporting it) or how in terms of patching NRS has literally not given us a single thing we actually asked for (I can empirically prove this) in terms of balance decisions or balancing direction.
