MKX does a real good job of making you uncomfortable and making you play in weird ways. Some examples include Crystaline/Sorcerer armor. Unbreakable's Armor Breaking. Demo's grenades (I can't believe they didn't change these like at all) GM's Ice Klone. Bo's EX Fart. I could make a whole list if enough people want it tbh.
I guess I don't see it as "weird" or "broken" having to play (against) every character a little different, but I think that's a distinctly non-mk sensibility which is why its becoming so maligned here. MK move design has been largely homogenous forever. Maybe moves do weird things on hit, but generally a hit is a hit, a block is a block, a jump arc is a jump arc, etc. So the fact that now a single character can have 3 very distinct attack patterns within the same subset of moves must seem jarring to the I should be able to jab anti air into 30% damage every single time crowd. The idea that a character might have some weird gimmick that says you don't get to punish me the same is still very foreign here.
Games like Tekken, KoF, Guilty, Blaz, even Marvel (though the old ones apply way more than the new ones) almost always have characters or even a small subset of characters that make you rethink basic principles like blocking and mobility and poking just because they exist. Tekken has had characters like this for years, so much so that they don't even bat an eye lash when it turns out this character has weird unblockable projectiles or a crazy 360 degree parry or something. Namco sometimes just does not give a fuck about the norm. It's why the FGC at large calls Smash a bullshit party game, because from match up to match up the rules of the game literally change. This character literally cannot be juggled, this one eats projectiles, this one is two characters, etc...
I think we're just dealing with the fact that this is the way NRS wants to go and a lot of us don't. People are used to perfecting one style of play, and not simply becoming adequate enough to win at several. IMHO, that's really the only way you can make a game now that we have things like youtube and streams. It took the SF community about 20 minutes to plumb the absolute depths of SF5. Their tier list hasn't changed since day 4. I don't think that's a commentary on overall quality of its design, I think that's just because its a very one size fits all game and the internet eats those for breakfast. Consequently, their players hate that characters like Mika exist that can just obliterate "fundamentals". Mika would however seem absolutely normal in MKX or Guilty Gear.
