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Question Using Health as a balance tool

Which options would be best for balancing out MK9 for the remainder of it's competitive life?


  • Total voters
    12
First off congrats to GGA Dizzy for winning VxG and winning over many awesome players en route to doing so. Congrats and good stuff to all who competed as well.

*PLEASE READ THE WHOLE POST BEFORE EITHER VOTING OR POSTING A STATEMENT AND PLEASE POST WITH SOME SENSE. THANK YOU!*

Now to reinforce the topic of how we as a scene need to intervene for MK9 such that we don't have to wait for a nonexistent balance patch from nrs in order to extend our game's tournament life. And by tournament life, I'm referring to us having respectable numbers of increasing entrants for the game like we did when we were a part of MLG events last year. That stemmed into majors as well and as a result we sat on a pretty good high horse that eventually rode us into our third EVO in spite of our game's flaws. Now with the balance set in stone and the game's mechanics with resets being what they are, I think it's safe to say that with declining numbers due to the previous topics mentioned that actions needed to be taken for us to continue to enjoy the game competitively.

That said, the possibilities of banning certain characters and or their overpowering tactics like resets, boosts, etc, were all considered by all top players at one point. When we take a look at what those characters like Kabal, Smoke, Cyrax, etc were capable of when they got the opportunity, then it was understandable. However, to those that have put years worth of time and effort into those characters because they were their favorites that was not a very fair option and we'd be in the process of doing the opposite of our objective of building the scene up. That said, there is an alternative way to possibly tip the scales in everyone's favor so that compromise can be made. Thanks to Relaxedstate, it's been brough up for us to give the code for reducing a characters health by 25% a shot.

This is a radical change and quite frankly had not been thought of before (correct me if i'm wrong), but when we think of Akuma in SF, the reason why he isn't totally overpowering in spite of his monstrous playstyle is because of his piss ant health. So with that in mind, relaxedstate thought that we should have characters that have those mechanics or completely stomp on the scales of balance this kind of an equalizer and see how it goes in tournaments so that character loyalists can keep playing their characters and have their broken mechanics.

Or we could give the players a choice of what they want to do in terms of reset characters (Keep your resets but take the health handicap or Don't take the health handicap but you'll be dq'ed for using resets).

Overall, this is just a way to get people thinking of ways to help the game's tournament life in the run that we have until a new game is released and to give us another option besides IGAU as our main game.
 

Relaxedstate

PTH|RM Relaxedstate
Yeah I just thought of it the other day after Pig suggested that is how we balance Injustice.

I mean we have the kombat kodes for MK. It could be worth a discussion or test run. IMO though the game is fun and tournament worthy as is so I wouldn't recommend any changes.

We should take steps. Ban rooftop day. Then if it is still bad do the health thing...then if it is worse we can talk characters. (I doubt this though) Kabal at VxG got mopped up today. A reptile made Jr switch back to Jax from Kabal. Chris G beat pLs Kabal. Johnny Cage (Dizzy Cage) beat a Kabal. Kung LAo again beat Kabal. I lost count of all the Kabal ghosts swirling around right now in the afterlife
 
Yeah I just thought of it the other day after Pig suggested that is how we balance Injustice.

I mean we have the kombat kodes for MK. It could be worth a discussion or test run. IMO though the game is fun and tournament worthy as is so I wouldn't recommend any changes.

We should take steps. Ban rooftop day. Then if it is still bad do the health thing...then if it is worse we can talk characters. (I doubt this though) Kabal at VxG got mopped up today. A reptile made Jr switch back to Jax from Kabal. Chris G beat pLs Kabal. Johnny Cage (Dizzy Cage) beat a Kabal. Kung LAo again beat Kabal. I lost count of all the Kabal ghosts swirling around right now in the afterlife

We've seen flashes of kabal getting beaten on a multitude of occasions (most notably 16 bit at MLG anaheim last year), but in the end, kabal has won more tourneys than any other character in the game for a reason (look at MLG as a whole, kabal won 3/4).
 

Under_The_Mayo

Master of Quanculations
I don't think changing health is going to work unless a game is designed with that from the beginning. And I certainly wouldn't trust NRS to do it either...

Ok so Cyrax murders most of the cast, so maybe we'd want to reduce his health. But what about matches like Kabal? And you're gonna make his 5 5's become 6 4s now? No one will ever agree to any of it. Wish something could be done though.
 

Relaxedstate

PTH|RM Relaxedstate
We've seen flashes of kabal getting beaten on a multitude of occasions (most notably 16 bit at MLG anaheim last year), but in the end, kabal has won more tourneys than any other character in the game for a reason (look at MLG as a whole, kabal won 3/4).
True. But how much of Kabals dominance is REO...and how much is Kabal? Just very tough to discern those things ya know
 
We should probably reduce Kitana's health or raise opponents health when fighting Kitana because she does half life combos and good unbreakable damage...

No, the health system is fine.
 
Honestly REO is the only top Kabal. It's been shown that he's not broken, but this may work to get players back in the game or something.

I think it's worth a shot though
 
I can't believe threads like this with poll options like this are coming out of known tournament players, it sounds sooooo desperate.
 
True. But how much of Kabals dominance is REO...and how much is Kabal? Just very tough to discern those things ya know

Well add Detroit ballin, Curbo, PL, and all other top players that have switched to the character and have not only enjoyed success but have deterred their success because they have admitted that it was the character that cashed their checks and not them. When they admit it themselves, then discerning be damned, we have a problem.