I’d love to hear your reasons for thinking it’s a gimmick and not competitively viable (I’m not expecting any good ones at all).
Tekken Tag, KOF, and the entire Vs. series has proven that tag team is not just a gimmick and is plenty viable in the competitive scene.
Genius, I’m not saying the sheer concept of teams is a gimmick.
James Chen was right in not elaborating. He’s writing for his audience and the audience the article was written for wouldn’t understand nor care about the details. That audience isn’t exclusive to IGN, it seems.
well we’ve got both the half-assed elitism and marvel-myopia covered here.
This is exactly what I was taking about. Things in the wrong games are automatically gimmicks, and if you disagree worth one of the saints of the community, you’re an ign scrub.
Lol, you don’t want to elaborate. As I thought, you have no actual reason for calling the tag team a gimmick.
If you think making a vague statement, refusing to elaborate, and then resorting to ad hominem is going to pass for a viable argument, then you’re badly mistaken.
…And? Last I checked, day 1 is still within the first two weeks.
You’re proving the point. There’s one optimal style for most characters in MvC3. Wolverine rushes down. Zero rushes down. Hulk pressures opponents and then command grabs or hits the M or H button, sometimes mixing in cr.L. Whenever you see a character come onto the screen in MvC3, you have a pretty good idea of what strategy they’re going to go for. Characters with one accentuated style is a long standing feature of fighting games.
Personally I think it’s whole-assed, not a half-assed, but yeah. You get this a lot when people bash something for no reason. When you have nothing reasonable on your side, elitism is one of the only things left to turn to.
Tag teams in mortal kombat bring new mixups, for example a tag in combo attack is predetermined by what character performs it but it will still probably be a mid, low or a launcher, all useful for different reasons. A good example of how tag team mode changes the game is this, think of a string that ends with a low and can be used as a tag combo, if you’re other character is someone like Kung Lao who tags in with an overhead then you’ve got something dangerous going already. You can also do combos into either a tag in special or an assist special like Kung Laos ex hat wich can give any character combination a great number of new comboing possibilities. And there are always the quick tags. Kung Lao spin quick tagged into some other character that might get better damage/oki/resets out of it.
Honestly, Mk9s team mode might actually be better than mvc3s for the simple reason that you have more ways to use your “other” character and you can actually atleast relatively safely switch characters aswell. I’m not really sure though, the game hasn’t been out for long and it has been hard for me to get people to actually want to play tag team mode. So i’m just basing this off of my training mode experience.
Holy shit. I never said it was wrong. Yeah, I’m an elitist. While everyone else in this thread gets to bash James Chen all day and say “Well, if MvC3=“depth”…fuck depth and give me MK9 all day. Seriously.”
you’re such a sensitive wall flower.
What you’re describing still sounds like you’re using two characters instead of genuinely building a team.
Teamplay in MK9 is more limited than Marvel in part because each character only has one assist. However, it’s absurdly early in the game to say it is a gimmick. MK9 is one of the few games that gives you the choice to play solo or tag team. Most people are playing solo so far because that’s familiar for Mortal Kombat. Nobody really knows what each character can fully do yet, so they don’t know what characters make effective and interesting teams.
Once people settle in and begin experimenting we will see the rise of team strategies and perhaps see interest in teamplay rise.
The fact that we’re finding more and more big damage combos with most characters may matter a lot to team games in the near future. It is becoming possible to kill a character faster, so the inherent strategy in tag games of when to switch out characters should begin to make matches interesting.
There is the fact that characters in MK don’t regain health when tagged out, but on the other hand, there’s no snapback type function. Also haven’t seen a lot of experimentation with tag juggle combos yet.
…That’s not an elitist statement.
Very few to no one is bashing James Chen. Pretty much every post is starting with “I have enormous respect for James Chen, but,” and then they explain how they think his opinion on this topic is ill formed.
BTW, you’ve lost all semblance of an argument.
This so reads like you’re just upset that you think people are bashing Chen and I guess Marvel. It’s useful in its way because it exactly illustrates the problem.
The only reason people are talking about this either way is because he’s an inner circle guy, and people get all cult of personality about it (especially him). He hasn’t shown himself to be particularly informed, but he has this platform, and was asked, so what the hell, right?
At the same time, the dude can handle himself. He doesn’t need you or anyone else getting mad on his behalf.
(It burns me deeply to use the ‘he’s just ignorant about the game’ argument, which I usually hate, seems apt this time tho’ :p)
Edit: And theres a reason why I said half-assed elitist. It’s not REALLY elitist if you’re all about something that’s not actually, well, ‘elite’. Its just tribalism then.
As i see it, tag team in MK9 gives players a chance to compliment one character with another. I didn’t mean pick two rushdown characters and just go out mashing. That is certainly possible, and it might be really effective. But what i think is the best part is that you can give characters new setups and combos and at the same time have the chance to be more competitive at multiple ranges.
I already said almost no one is bashing James Chen, just disagreeing with him. I know you’ve demonstrated the tact of a sledgehammer, so just take my word for it - there’s a difference.
Lol. Sure, pointing out ad hominems makes me sensitive in your world. In the real world, it means you have absolutely no substance behind what you’re saying. You’re really continuing to prove that.
The level of team synergy is not necessarily a requirement for a successful tag-team game. And when the mode hasn’t been explored pretty much at all, at least not competitively, we have absolutely no idea how much team synergy is available. Yet, you go ahead and brand it a gimmick anyway.
Disregarding all the bullshitting with this post:
James Chen is well informed in fighters and respected in the community as an OG so of course his opinion is valued by many, but to me this is just like the argument that Viscant set forth for 3s’ parry and why its a “bad game.” The problem here is… Viscant is a Marvel player first, not a street fighter player, and was never good enough to really speak on 3s in the first place.
It’s the same thing here. Chen is a Street Fighter player first, not MK. So why does he get to decide whether the game has depth or not or whether it should be tournament worthy? I wouldn’t expect Shock or TB to come in and praise or put down any SF game and people take it as truth and I wouldn’t expect a Tekken player to come in and talk about either game when this is their first MK game and feel credible about it.
The only player coming from SF that I would remotely take as an unbiased opinion would be ILUJoe for the simple fact that he has intimate knowledge of MK, specifically UMK3.
Besides, I only saw the GOOD MK (UMK3) being played at majors outside of a few tournaments, not “the next new thing” whether its good or bad like the SF community.
I’ll be the first to admit doing combos isn’t rocket science in MK, but I also don’t think depth = being able to combo anything off/into anything like MvC3. To me depth is the metagame that goes into it as well as the underlying execution barrier because lets be real, PARTS of combos in MK are easy but a lot of things are timing and space based as well,. In my opinion and experience, there isn’t much below the surface of MvC3, you fish for a hit and do the same combo every character has for a kill. If you watch the PowerUp followup with Seb and Tom Brady, he tells you whats going on and whats happening on both sides. I feel like there’s more decision making and reaction based thinking (not just reaction in hitting the button) in just 2 rounds of that set than entire tournaments of MvC3. That MK9 breakdown really reminds me of STS with Seb and Damdai, where Damdai explains the mentality behind whats going on during the example matches and what he has to do.
As for MvC3: That game has essentially 5-6 ‘sentinels.’ In MvC2 you could build a myriad of teams around Sentinel alone. Well, in MvC3 its the same thing with Wesker, Wolverine, Phoenix, Dante, Zero, and Ammy. You pick one of them and build a team around them. Once you do that, everything turns into a simple combo into DHC glitch that you build 2-3 meters during your initial combo to do anyways unless its Phoenix of course. That’s about as deep as the game goes, in my opinion, but I’m not known well in the community let alone as a marvel player so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.
Genius, the only one who’s showing any knowledge is Thefluke.
*I’d love to hear your reasons for thinking it’s a gimmick and not competitively viable (I’m not expecting any good ones at all).
Tekken Tag, KOF, and the entire Vs. series has proven that tag team is not just a gimmick and is plenty viable in the competitive scene.*
Your original post amounts to, MK tag team isn’t a gimmick because other games have teams. Herp Derp. Naruto Clash of the Ninja 3 had 2 different team modes so that must be the deepest shit ever, then, right?
I might have somewhat agreed with these views if it was some of the early 3D entries. However, for MK9 it is more open. So you can do what you can think.
Really though, one’s views of depth in a fighting game is subjective most of the time. Now if they are talk out of their ass and don’t really explain their views, then I would just take it with a grain of salt.
*Edit: Don’t really go to IGN, they are not that good.
But is it more than “I get an alternative mixup through my tag combo” while playing whatever character I have in front…like I would normally in single character mode?
And as far as compatibility goes, how mindful must one be to create a pair that works well together? Can I make a well suited pair up with Baraka, that can compete with a pair involving Kung Lao?
More ad hominem. You’re not saying anything at all anymore, and you’re making yourself look pretty dumb. Maybe you should take a break.
Or you can melt down here. That would also be very entertaining for us.
No, I was saying that some games based on tag team are competitive. You just said MK’s tag team was a gimmick and offered no explanation (and you still haven’t, fyi). In response, I offered several tag team games whose tag team mechanics are not gimicks. I did NOT say that all games with tag team are competitively viable. Those are very different statements.
I said it in response to you in particular because you have no problem getting on someone remotely insinuating that MK bad, while others in this thread haven’t certainly been the greatest in respecting other games.
Completely ridiculous, considering I said nothing bad about the core game itself. Just that an extra feature didn’t add anything to the game, and it was in response to the accusation that Marvel 3’s depth was nothing special in comparison to this golden child of a game.
Tell me, who are the elitists in the thread?
As far saying Chen is ignorant goes, I better see some sort of thread about MK team building with a detailed 10 question survey from you Windy.
Ugh you gave me flashbacks. 
There’s a number of good reasons I’d never try to be involved wiht MK as I was with marvel 3 before its release. What a debacle that was.
Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to see a lot of things because of that experience, and one of the things that struck me was how hostile that group were to the idea of MK game in general. From Valle to Keits to Gilley to Chinndogg, it was lockstep uniform, and so very very strange.
Thus, when I see them using their positions of authority to take a swipe, its only natural to say ‘hey wait a minute, these guys probably aren’t the best resource for input on the game. (to put it mildly)’
PS: I didn’t write that survey, I just passed it along. Poor guy doesn’t get any credit
Chindogg, I agree.
Gilley? No comment.
Keits? I doubt it. The tournament he’s organizing was the first one I heard supporting MK as one of the featured games.
Valle? Fuck no. Like I said to you before, Valle supports all fighting games. He fucking defends Arcana Heart 3, Smash Bros Brawl and WWE All-Stars, you think that type of guy would be prejudice against Mortal Kombat? When LevelUp was streaming it the day after release, Valle took the soap box and defended it amongst callers and he plays it regularly on PeacefulJay’s.
There’s no anti-MK illuminati.
yes those late night conversations didn’t happen, not at all… You’re totally right.
Its possible that some of them have come around certainly. But the hostility at least was most definitely there.
And seriously, I don’t mean at all to say they’re plotting against it, that’s just crazy
… and I think I’ll leave this conversation at that. It’s really not worth the trouble I could get in to argue on this line any further ><