What's new

The "zoning" myth vs. the reality of pro-level skill

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
Wrong. If you lose to someone "spamming" in NRS games you're a fucking scrub.
This statement might hold true for any other series except for the one where a character was literally winning majors by alternating 2 different specials
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
Also stop making polarised comparisons to mkx. The community equally hated that, it was just less boring cause you didn't have pew pew walk back all game in 75% matchups.
I would argue that watching combo movie and then realizing it was a tournament wasn't any less boring, not one bit.

Something Inj2 did right is setting up base for a decent neutral not bogged down by clunky movement, something that was absent from previous games of NRS. But that base was quickly pushed into nigh-irrelevance by copious amount of "nope, I'm not playing your neutral" gameplay elements, including zoning and certain movement options.

For that reason I'm not a fan of bringing up other games of NRS as well. Inj2 was the closest NRS managed to get to making a decent fundamental FG, and although then they basically thrashed that foundation when they started designing characters, previous games weren't up to the task from the get go, albeit for different reasons.
 

jcbowie

...more deadly than the dawn.
So now MKX zoning is broken because of HQT or what?
MK zoning wasn't broken because of the run mechanic and the fact that half the cast had quick teleports, without that stuff characters like HQT, Reptile, Jackie, etc. would have been undisputed top characters.
 

jcbowie

...more deadly than the dawn.
It wasn't that the zoning wasn't good, it was that the rushdown was so ridiculously oppressive that it was never the best option for most of the game's life.
 

jcbowie

...more deadly than the dawn.
Its just hilarious when people try to defend zoning like its some sort of rocket science.
It's not really about zoning being rocket science. Yeah, there are more complicated rushdown characters in this game than there are complicated zoning characters, I don't think there's many terribly complicated zoning characters in the game at all. There are, however, plenty of simple, effective, strong rushdown characters too. It's cool to play complicated rushdown with tons of options, and when you get to the level of execution and knowledge where you can do accomplish this then you're essentially up at the higher levels of play where "spam" isn't viable anymore. If you're not at that skill level, if you can't do cancel pressure or restands or resets or just don't understand advanced concepts, so you just want a simple rushdown character who's still really good? Those exist.

Like I said before, if you keep getting zoned while you're playing Flash but you won't do the projectile dodge or mixup your approaches or doing rm stance cancels? It doesn't mean that "zoning spam trash" is OP or something, it means you aren't good enough at playing a complicated character yet.
 
Avoiding zoning is tricky, people prefer more crazy and a bit random gamestyles.
Everyone will agree that playin MKX was fun due to up close 50/50 where out of 10 games you could win 1 or 2 against a better opponent. Also tools to escape the corner mauling against a masher were way simpler.

The main problem is that zoning is easier (or harder to deal with) while more frustrating to play and boring to watch so obviously people will be upset in the grand scheme of things. Sad cause I2 was pretty balanced and had good neutral balance compared to other nrs games.

That’s why randoms will often complain and prefer more random/casual games, everyone nowadays plays fortnite while nobody wants to play Quake. Same for Warcraft being dead while what was the cheap version (lol/dota) being a worldwide esport. And even there after years nothing is balanced, countless skill categories are required and the community is super toxic cause a bad player will lose you the game once his opponent gets a little lead (in a similar way of not knowing how to deal with zoning they don’t know how to deal with a losing match up or simply how to lose lane without losing the game). Out of idk how many millions playing LoL for example the vast majority (80-85%?) is below a “basic knowledge of the game fundamentals” skill level.

As a gamer that played different “competitive” games i’ve seen very often the same stuff, the balance between high skill ceiling and funny for the casual experience is always hard, especially if the playerbase isnt big enough to have tens of skill levels like LoL/CSGO/etc to match you with people similar to you.
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
That’s why randoms will often complain and prefer more random/casual games, everyone nowadays plays fortnite while nobody wants to play Quake.
Fortnite is extremely high APM when playing well. You can coast by without doing it but you will lose to someone who is.


Same for Warcraft being dead while what was the cheap version (lol/dota) being a worldwide esport.
This one doesn't make a whole lot of sense man. Warcraft 3 was heaps popular. 6 million sales all up, and one of the OG games to get a proper competitive scene. And spawned one of the most successful games ever in WoW. League of Legends was released almost a decade afterwards, and Dota came after even that, of course WC3 is going to be dead by then.


Out of idk how many millions playing LoL for example the vast majority (80-85%?) is below a “basic knowledge of the game fundamentals” skill level.
there's no way that's true. It does not take more than a few matches to get "basic knowledge of game fundamentals. Even low level on games of Dota the majority of people seem to understand basic game fundamentals, it's the higher level stuff and.... questionable play decisions that hold them back.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
This one doesn't make a whole lot of sense man. Warcraft 3 was heaps popular. 6 million sales all up, and one of the OG games to get a proper competitive scene. And spawned one of the most successful games ever in WoW. League of Legends was released almost a decade afterwards, and Dota came after even that, of course WC3 is going to be dead by then.
DotA preceded League (2003). League was just a way to commercialize the popularity of DotA which already had a ton of players.
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
DotA preceded League (2003). League was just a way to commercialize the popularity of DotA which already had a ton of players.
Dota was a mod at that point, and didn't even have actual servers, was the furthest thing from a worldwide eSport. It was the release of Dota as an actual game (Dota 2) that propelled it to being an esport, with the first TI happening in 2011, the same year that it launched, 2 years after the release of League of Legends.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Dota was a mod at that point, and didn't even have actual servers, was the furthest thing from a worldwide eSport. It was the release of Dota as an actual game (Dota 2) that propelled it to being an esport, with the first TI happening in 2011, the same year that it launched, 2 years after the release of League of Legends.
DotA was at WCG and Blizzcon just like Counter-Strike and the other esports games of that time. Esports are just far bigger now than they were in 2003-2006.
 
Last edited:

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
DotA was at WCG and Blizzcon just like Counter-Strike and the other esports games of that time. Esports are just far bigger now than they were in 2003.
Nope the first WCG to feature Dota 1 or 2 was in 2012. Neither it nor League was an Esport until Warcraft 3 was nearly a decade old - not a fair comparison.