Yeah, I never assume any select screen to be the actual number, especially Ed Boon ones. Almost all his fighting games have the cursor go off the grid to reveal more characters or boxes flip to show a second choice.
Punishing a player for blocking normals is just about the dumbest and most heavy-handed way of preventing turtleing that’s ever been implemented.
Works pretty well in MK, and provides a couple characters like Johnny, Skarlet, Kabal, and Sonya with some real fun setups.
I’m not sure how well its going to work out in Injustice because of stupid ass pushblock, but I do hope there is a Johnny type character with hilariously blockstrings.
I wonder how meter building will work in this game, in MK you only gained meter if people blocked your normals, and you got none if they hit.
You just blocked all of their crouching normals, defended against their two overhead attempts, and read the crossup perfectly. Now, let’s punish you for this good defense by having you lose a tenth of your health bar because of it.
How does this even remotely make sense? Why would you penalize players for using their most basic defensive tool? Good defense should be rewarded just as much as good offense.
How is pushblocking stupid? (Although, since they cost meter, they’re more analogous to Dead Angle Attacks/Counter Assaults/Alpha Counters.)
I’m arguing for it in MK, specifically MK, and in MK, guarding against lows and overheads doesn’t take skill, it is very easy to fuzzy guard everything, and there is no such thing as a true crossup. Blocking is very powerful in this game.
In MK, the best defense has always been good offense.
It’s not about when to push the block button, its all about knowing when to release it. Knowing your opponents strings and normals, knowing when to stop blocking and poke out of your opponents offense and get to a neutral situation. And having to do it as quickly as possible.
I know since you don’t play MK, this is all probably very foreign to you, but it creates a very fun metagame and pace that a lot of people really enjoy, it’s what makes MK, MK.
The only thing I would change about it, is doing something similar to Persona, and make it so chip couldn’t kill, well most chip, certain projectiles should still be able to.
Basically MK is weird and not like any other fighting game, but it works for it.
She hasn’t been introduced (yet), but an Achievement/Trophy Image shows seven villains’ faces on it and it appears her face shows up in the middle.
And that is the greatness of Mortal Kombat, it was almost the polar opposite of other fighter games out there, who were steady arranging their gameplay to be like Street Fighter.
I’m still not crazy about the block button getting eliminated, but as long as Normals still do chip damage, I can manage.
Man, that’s too bad. Good defense should be rewarded by not dying.
If it’s super easy to block everything, doesn’t this point to a larger problem within the core game itself that should have a more extensive fix than the quick Band-Aid patchup that is chip damage on normals? Blocking being so strong in the first place comes mostly from two things: the fact that the Block button exists, and that characters have less varied mixups due to having canned strings instead of freeform normals. It’s a problem when you’ve screwed up so much on the balance of basic offense/defense rewards that the only solution you can come up with to strengthen offense is to penalize players for not letting themselves get punched in the face.
This is in no way unique to MK. Pretty much every good fighter has this; I could point you to practically any given match and see defending players crushing the openings in their opponents blockstrings or finding the right gap to escape. And you don’t need chip damage on normals for characters to have strong offensive tools and pressure, as seen in games like GG, BB, KOF, and others.
Variety is good. The only way the genre evolves is by trying new things. But those things have to actually work, and I don’t think it really does for MK9. MK9’s based on an archaic framework that was developed at a time where there wasn’t a true standard for traditional fighting game mechanics. The sort of wild experimentation that comes with a new genre is totally natural, but eventually some designs will be weeded out. Future titles in the genre will expand on the framework of the most successful and influential title, and for good reason; because they were deemed the mechanics that worked the best and felt most natural. (You don’t exactly see many platformers borrowing classic Castlevania’s jumping mechanics now, do you?)
If you’re one of those games that’s trying to redefine what can be called a fighting game (Smash, Dissidia, Power Stone, etc.), then that’s an entirely different story, but MK clearly styles itself as a traditional 2D fighter. Its continued desire to reject provenly-sound mechanics just because, and needing to implement haphazard solutions to basic problems because of that just isn’t a good look.
So any game that doesn’t follow SF’s set book of rules is dumb and needs to conform to be more like it?
Yup sounds like classic SRK bullshit to me. MK is fine the way it is.
It plays much differently and many people enjoy the gameplay both at a high level (FGC) and on a casual level, sells millions of copies, has a diehard fanbase of both hardcores and casuals, and is at Evo for a 3rd straight year with a community all it’s own to support it.
Why the hell would they possibly change the mechanics now? I swear, some of you guys that come in here don’t make any logical sense to me.** Just play the games you like and let us enjoy our game!**
I don’t believe I ever told you to stop playing or enjoying MK. I certainly enjoy my fair share of games that, while not completely mechanically sound, are still very fun and have interesting mechanics.
But I do have the right to discuss the merits of fighting game mechanics on a public forum dedicated to discussing fighting game mechanics. I respect Lord Godfrey and others who have provided their perspective on why they prefer or see no problem with certain NRS design decisions, even if I don’t agree with them. Frankly, Reason, your “NO U” dismissal is just intellectually insulting. Your insinuation that I believe every game needs to be like Street Fighter is asinine when in the very post you’re responding to, I express openness towards various fighters that take a completely different approach to the genre. Not to mention the fact that the games I enjoy the most have added so much to Street Fighter’s basic skeleton that they don’t at all resemble the original game.
That’s not going to work on Reason4U. He / She / It is different.
I really hate SRK’s quoting system.
The block button is a problem that is never going to go away, they are too afraid of their fans to remove it.
The reason why its so easy to fuzzy guard has no reason to do with canned strings, the strings, along with your normals, command normals, and specials usually give a large variety of mixups.
The problem is that all the attacks in MK are very slow, like 16 frames for a low kick slow, it is very easy to see a mix up coming. Some characters have better and faster stuff then others and can play the mix up game pretty well, like Kabal, and LIu kang, but in the end in order to fix this IMO of course, is to speed up the damn game. The slowness comes from the fact the last 4 MK games before this were 3D fighters, and they are used to these mechanics.
I know most fighting games have this as well, but I mean more about the pacing, chip normals provide a constant immediate threat, where your best course of action is to fight your way out. Offense is always preferred, and relying on defense is a true last resort.
The problem is, you don’t play MK9, you haven’t put enough time into the game to judge if it works or not, we have, and we like it, and it works for us. MK9 has a lot of problems that NRS need to fix in the coming years, but chip on normals is not one of them.
For the record, MK9 doesn’t really style itself on being a 2D fighter, and that’s where some of its problems come from, it really is a 3D fighting game on a 2D plane. People always joke that MK4 is more of 2D game then 9 is.
MK9 has slow normals, but the specials are faster.
Smokes teleport for example is so fast that it’s practically impossible to react to it on reaction. You would never be able to block his stuff, if it was back to block.
But a lot of the specials are still very unsafe on block, so you have to be more cautious, when you throw them out.
With having such fast specials and so many teleports and stuff like that, the game basically screams for a block-button, as for now and how it is now. Obviously they came up with the block-button at the beginning and decided to go with it from that point on.
But when you have a block button, all you have to bother about are high / low mix up’s and since not every character in MK9 has a good mix up game, chip damage on normals does fit MK9 very well.
I don’t like chip damage on normals either, because it does feel like it rewards aggressive play, while great blocking doesn’t safe you as often and you simply get chipped out most of the time, but luckily many things will change in Injustice and hopefully make the game more accessable to people who don’t like the idea of the block button.
There are already 24 characters anounnced and for now it looks like only two of them have teleports (Shazam and Raven) with one of them (Raven) being the one with the dangerous teleport, since she can attack shortly after.
But every character seems to have cross ups and stuff like that, basically stuff that isn’t that crucial in MK9, because of the block button.
MK9 without a block button would be broken as fuck, people need to realize that. Chip damage on normals aren’t half as bad as the damage you would take if it was back to block.
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Figured this could break up the mechanics debate for a moment. Flashpoint Aquaman was shown off on Facebook, details on how to unlock it will be coming later this week. They also have a big reveal, so either a new character (My money is on Black Adam) or something about the games release.
I’m guessing the unlock will be similar to the Arrow DLC, vote in the battle poll and choose it as a reward but no idea.
For anyone who doesn’t know, there’s a stream on twitch called Injustice Live hosted by both MK players and comic book fans, they essentially go over all the news surrounding the game each week including breakdowns on each character as they are announced, comic discussions, etc. It’s on Sundays at 11 pm ET and it can drag on a bit (usually about 3 hours) but its a great way to get info on the game that you might have missed from the trailers and stuff.
I generally like most of the costumes in this game, but have to say Aquaman’s flashpoint costume helps demonstrate less is more.
I agree with what you said about the Block Button (as most MK fans would), but I disagree about the Chip Damage.
I don’t think it rewards aggressive gameplay, as nearly everyone on the cast has options on how to counteract rushdown (Sheeva’s Armored Grab, Cage’s Flip Kick, Sub-Zero’s Ice Clone), and just learning what 3-4 hit combo a fighter uses and how to punish it. In fact I’m worried that if chip damage on normals isn’t included in Injustice, fans might experience the same thing that happened with SFxT. Now I know that’s highly unlikely since a fast clock, pauses in gameplay and other aspects played into that debacle, but as different as Boon says this game will be from MK9, it’s still running on the same engine.
My hope is that Injustice will be to MK what Marvel Super Heroes was to Super Street Fighter II.
Yeah…he looks like Cole from Infamous.
Hahahaha I didn’t notice that! He totally looks like cole from Infamous.
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Blackest Night Batman, Best Buy pre-order and probably future DLC for everyone. Looks good costume wise but the face reminds me of Darkseid in a Batman cosplay.