Discussion Patches overwhelmingly help NRS games not hurt them

[Barrogh]

Oh I totally agree, I think DLC characters is bullshit to begin with. I want them in the game, and if they HAVE to make them special somehow, then make us unlock them.

Well, I just don't agree with that unlock thingy. I'm not sure what should that character be in order to be perceived as special or something - assuming we can agree that something that isn't healthy for the game as competitive is out of question.

Other than that, having to unlock them becomes a hassle at one point and since publishers don't make anything out of it anyway, why do we have to go through that hassle? I can hardly see positives here.

Unless they make pay to unlock or something, but that's another question.

 

[NRF CharlieMurphy]

The amount of patches are not what hurt a game at a competetive level (for the most part). Its the length of support.

this is the only thing worth mentioning

if the patches do indeed help the games... then why does the support stop? Makes no sense.

 

[FlappyDaniel]

Naw, you're right. My sense that them being unlockable makes them special just comes from a time of gaming before microtransactions were a thing, and I'm just used to being expected to expend effort and fun and time in their game to unlock MORE of the game, not just paying for it.

edit: my point is more the characters they're adding in now I guess, I want to be able to just unlock them via In-game sources, not HAVE to pay for them.

 

[TotteryManx]

Hasn't the last two games lost competitors due to patching? People are hoping MKX doesn't get patched to shit already. I personally quit Injustice after the first patch because I didn't care for the game enough, but no matter who you nerf there will always be a big bad that slips by.

Also, fuck it. Buff Mileena. Half of the people want Jin nerfs because they don't like the character. Kenshi was a yawn fest in MK9 and made the game hell to a lot of people. I hope he is trash and stays trash. Who honestly wants to see Kenshi be dominant two games in a row? lol. Sub-Zero is not broken and there are guides on how to punish his shenanigans.

Whew...felt good to get that off my chest.

 

[STRYKIE]

Arcade in modern gaming shouldn't count, arcade is niche and the awareness is inevitably lower, than to have the game on consoles.

Arcade by default has a bigger presence due to having a market in Japan alone, which MK has never had.

And general fighting game popularity pre-2000 was overwhelmingly bigger than what it is now. When fighting games from the arcade were ported to one home platform exclusively, back then it could be a market share decider, nowadays, they tend to go the way of the new Killer Instinct.

 

[kabelfritz]

There is a lot of discussion going on about how patches ruin NRS games and anyone who even thinks about discussing patches should be tarred and feathered and ostracized from the TYM community. I would like to give some ammunition to people on this sight that feel like they are not allowed to discuss MKX balance for fear of being called a "complainer" or even worse. Please discuss this game, talk about it, wonder out loud if you think something is overpowered or underpowered. In fact that is what this sight is supposed to be about, the open discussion of things, not people telling you "you shouldn't talk about this or that".

I would like to back my claim up with evidence. Let us please examine Injustice's patches. Awhile ago Slips got into an argument with MIT about whether patches were good for Injustice or bad. Slips then challenged MIT to go back and look at Injustice patches to see if they were an overall positive, or overall negative to Injustice. MIT is super busy in college and did not have the time to go through the Injustice patches so I did. Here is what I found.

Here are the links for my data.
http://www.injustice.com/en/news/updated-520-injustice-patch-v103-release-notes (Injustice first patch 05/20/2013)
http://www.injustice.com/en/news/injustice-patch-v104-release-notes (Injustice 2nd patch 06/04/2013)
http://www.injustice.com/en/news/injustice-patch-v105-release-notes (Injustice 3rd patch 06/26/13)
http://www.injustice.com/en/news/patch-106-release-notes (Injustice 4th patch 09/24/13)

MIT's main complaint was that characters like Deathstroke, and Scorpion got unfairly nerfed and that ruined Injustice. But I added up the changes and found that the positive changes were overwhelmingly positive and very rarely hurt Injustice, on a factor of 8/10. That means that 80% of the changes that happened helped Injustice be a better game, and 20% of the changes from the patch hurt the game.

Here they are.

1.03: 34 positive changes. 5 negative changes.
Changes of note in this patch.

• Broken characters like Aquaman, Superman are nerfed
• Low tier characters like Bane, Joker, Lobo, Raven, Shazam, Sinestro and Catwoman buffed
• Many unblockable's and insane block damage strings fixed.
• To be fair to the "patches are bad crowd" I added the Deathstroke nerfs and the Sinestro trait buffs as negatives to give them the benefit of the doubt.

1.04: 4 positives and 1 negative

• Mostly bug fixes but added a buff to Flash as a negative because possible Flash didn't need it.

1.05: 23 positive and 8 negatives.

• This had many positive things like more Superman nerfs
• But also had negatives like numerous Scorpion nerfs

1.06: The patch that saved Injustice. 89 positive changes. 18 negative changes. Also all of the negative changes I am giving the naysayers the benefit of the doubt if a nerf or buff was questionable I added it to the negative column. Notable changes in this patch where

• Nerfs to characters like Aquaman, Batgirl, Blackadam backdash etc. Superman and Zod
• Buffs to a plethora of characters like Catwoman, Green Arrow, Lobo, Lex Luthor, Joker, Zatanna etc.

Negatives I added

• 1 MMH buff, but he also got 1 nerf too (even though the buff outweighed the nerf), possible too many nerfs to Black Adam, and possible too many buffs to Bane.

Also take note that the FINAL Injustice patch too place before the game was even 6 months OLD! So the people that are telling you "you are not allowed to discuss patches until 6 months in are just absolutely crazy and out of touch.

So in closing the patches to Injustice included 150 positive changes and 32 negative changes. Patches saved Injustice.

My only hope with this post is to free people up to discuss what is on your minds. Please let us open up discussion instead of trying to stop people from talking. Thank you.

nobody is complaining about patches, only about too early patches

 

[WakeUp DP]

I don't think anyone has a problem with them patching their games.

It's the frequency of the patches and tendency to have knee-jerk reactions to crybabies on forums that has always been the issue.

^^^ this. Thread.

 

[Slymind]

Arcade by default has a bigger presence due to having a market in Japan alone, which MK has never had.

And general fighting game popularity pre-2000 was overwhelmingly bigger than what it is now. When fighting games from the arcade were ported to one home platform exclusively, back then it could be a market share decider, nowadays, they tend to go the way of the new Killer Instinct.

Bigger presence than what exactly? and you appear to be focusing on Japan, i'm talking global, arcade is niche, the nineties are gone(is there MKX on arcade anywhere in the world?), home consoles is where a game can become mainstream nowadays, release a game and let it be confined to arcades, and let's see how things go.

And, I clearly said modern gaming, fighting games were more mainstream in the past, but it was also relative to the amount of people playing games as well the industry expanded a lot(didn't Ed Boon himself said MKX was the biggest launch ever for the franchise?), and when you say "when fighting games were ported", it was not every fighting game, in the past there were countless generic and bad fighters, SF, MK, Tekken and KoF are the ones who had the most spotlight as far as i remember, not only that, but when it comes to competitive enviroment(which i believe is what we are discussing here), things are way more expanded as well, today fighitng games have online which is a big feature, onlines tournaments, online streams, sponsoring, and EVO seems to get bigger every year.

My whole point when adressing the other guy's post is: trying to use examples from more than a decade ago to try to understand things now, is not wise, the industry as whole and extremely different like it or not.

 

[Scoot Magee]

I just don't understand why people can't understand the argument many are making here. Nobody that I know of is just against patching all together, that's absurd. My problem is patching as we go, knee jerk patches as another person has mentioned.

If we take the time to really figure things out before patching the game the quality of the patch will most likely be a lot better. Discussion is needed for this, I encourage it, I agree with @GGA Jeremiah. What I don't encourage is calling for nerfs and buffs 2 damn weeks into the games life and I'm not implying that this is what the op wants.

I want the best game posdible. I don't want any oops he needed that or damn that was an unnecessary buff situations.

Patches are good, not bad but I think we can all agree there's room for improvement in the way nrs goes about it. There's also room for improvement within our community when it comes to complaining and etc.

Imo the game needs a longer stretch of support from nrs, not just 6 months. Keep patching to a minimum until we really figure things out so that we have the best game possible.

As I said before, the more info on the game that we compile as a community the better a future patch can be. We just need more time and exploration from players as opposed to machine gun patching and players crying. Support extended beyond 6 months would also be ideal.

Excuse the typos, my phone is a pos.

 

[Slips]

Also when I am able to win a tourny match with just chip from a trident rush, u know that a change for that move (and other moves) should have been made haha.

First patch:

• Normalized the amount of damage Aquaman inflicts on an opponent while they are blocking his Trident Rush (Down, Forward + 1)

Uh so this move actually WAS patched. It actually used to do even more chip than what it does now. He also had a silly 50/50, a lesser cool down on his trait, a safe scoop, and a block infinite in the corner.

You and a lot of people are missing the big picture. The patches help the game more than hurt. It's impossible to make 'nothing but good' changes because there are too many variables to account for and some of them end up not working out.

So in closing the patches to Injustice included 150 positive changes and 32 negative changes. Patches saved Injustice.

That's an 8 to 2 ratio of good changes vs. bad. But it seems like that's not enough for you. You want 10 to 0. Lol I mean yea man we would all like that but that's just not feasible. Don't ostracize patching and hyper-focus on the 2 bad changes when 8 good ones were made.

Most of you are forgetting that Injustice was on life-support until the final patch. Numbers were floundering at The Break. Numbers were floundering at Wednesday Night Fights. The ATL weekly had already died. And GGA was ridiculed and labelled as not being an up-to-date scene because they didn't have any good Black Adam and Superman players.

The 'lets wait and see' approach almost killed the game. Pre-patch Injustice god boo'd at Evo after Grand Finals because NRS waited to start balancing. If it wasn't for how awesome it was seeing Tyrant's Grundy and PPJ's Hawkgirl perform at NEC Injustice would not have even made Evo it's second year around.

I understand we are only a couple weeks in the game's life and it's probably too early to talk about serious nerfs/buffs. But you shouldn't get tarred and feathered for just talking about it.

Ultimately, NRS decides what they think is broke and what's not. We can let our voices be heard, but they get the final say. If we say nothing at all, then we limit feedback to them and maybe some things that should get addressed don't. This is a forum. Discussion is what this place is for. Let NRS filter out what who is right and who is wrong; what is broke and what is not.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

It's the frequency of the patches and tendency to have knee-jerk reactions to crybabies on forums that has always been the issue.

This is actually untrue -- and no matter how many times it's debunked, it will still be ignored and people will keep repeating this on the forums to over-inflate their own self-importance.

What people are calling "knee jerk reactions" are really the developers knowing that some things might be OP, waiting to see what happens, watching tons of streams and gameplay (I wonder if anyone is paying attention to how many streams Paulo and John are actually in), testing things in the lab, and drawing their own conslusions about what's not working out the way they intended.

The notion that the developers don't know anything themselves and just read the forums to do exactly what random people say is fairly ridiculous.

 

[STRYKIE]

Bigger presence than what exactly? and you appear to be focusing on Japan, i'm talking global, arcade is niche, the nineties are gone(is there MKX on arcade anywhere in the world?), home consoles is where a game can become mainstream nowadays, release a game and let it be confined to arcades, and let's see how things go.

And, I clearly said modern gaming, fighting games were more mainstream in the past, but it was also relative to the amount of people playing games as well the industry expanded a lot(didn't Ed Boon himself said MKX was the biggest launch ever for the franchise?), and when you say "when fighting games were ported", it was not every fighting game, in the past there were countless generic and bad fighters, SF, MK, Tekken and KoF are the ones who had the most spotlight as far as i remember, not only that, but when it comes to competitive enviroment(which i believe is what we are discussing here), things are way more expanded as well, today fighitng games have online which is a big feature, onlines tournaments, online streams, sponsoring, and EVO seems to get bigger every year.

My whole point when adressing the other guy's post is: trying to use examples from more than a decade ago to try to understand things now, is not wise, the industry as whole and extremely different like it or not.

I understand that obviously, but patches and revisions were still a thing back then on arcade boards, and they certainly weren't done as impulsively as they are now. That's probably what @d3v was trying to stress.

 

[YOMI MITYEAP]

Umm @Slips I won a whole match with that move lmao, obviously it wasn't patched in the right way. Also I am not missing any big picture at all.
Edit: I think u glanced over what I said about (what was left out of patches). Ppl need to consider both sides of an argument. I know exactly what Jeremiah is trying to say, but I dnt agree with it completely like some do.

 

[Big Pampering]

Umm @Slips I won a whole match with that move lmao, obviously it wasn't patched in the right way. Also I am not missing any big picture at all.

You're not maaking your point clear. right now it sounds like you are against patching, but the point you are trying to make I think is: wait and see what really needs to be patched. Am I right?

 

[Scoot Magee]

But 6 months? Seriously? I really hope that's not the case this time arounD.

 

[YOMI MITYEAP]

You're not maaking your point clear. right now it sounds like you are against patching, but the point you are trying to make I think is: wait and see what really needs to be patched. Am I right?

I pretty much pointed towards that in my posts, but some not getting that I suppose.

 

[Slips]

Umm @Slips I won a whole match with that move lmao, obviously it wasn't patched in the right way. Also I am not missing any big picture at all.
Edit: I think u glanced over what I said about (what was left out of patches). Ppl need to consider both sides of an argument. I know exactly what Jeremiah is trying to say, but I dnt agree with it completely like some do.

I think you aren't seeing how hard it is to actually balance a game.

 

[d3v]

People always use this argument and as someone who has been in the scene since SFII this is kinda crap. (YES I AM OLD)

First off Vanilla Sagat, while amazing, was not a game destroying character. Even then he forced anyone playing certain characters to have counter picks. He was oppressive sure, but to see a Sagat who breaks the game utterly we need O.Sagat, who by his very existence makes many characters unviable in Super Turbo.

Either way though, horrible balance doesn't mean people won't play a game, but it doesn't do the game any favors.

SF3 and MvC2 existed during the dark ages when options were very limited. Second SF3 has such strong defensive and universal mechanics (Parry mostly but also universally high damage) that good reads can win a match for anyone. You're still talking about a game that had Evos with 6 Chuns in the top 16 and that in long sets has 3 viable characters.

MvC2 is actually the ultimate example of why we should patch games. You have four viable characters in a game with 52 characters. Yeah people play it competitively, but you're talking about having 8% of a game's cast viable. That's awful.

MvC2 is so broken that you have a character who has a reliable infinite into guardbreak that guarantees a full team kill on a touch(Iron Man), and he isn't even considered competitively viable. Do you get how dumb that is?

Basically you're holding up as examples a few games where the only option in high level play was to pick a new character. Do you like that? Do you like losing at the character select screen? Is that really what you want? Cause your examples reinforce that you'd like to have a screen full of characters where 1 in 10 is actually an option.

I honestly prefer smaller cast games where I at least know that all the characters are useful. (KI+Skullgirls) But I think hoping for more than 3 viable characters in a game with 30 characters and 3 variations for each isn't unreasonable.

Seeing someone who claims to be OG get stuff wrong about MvC2 makes me sad.

First off, aside from Cable, the rest of the top 4 emerged only after a couple of years of play. There were countless points during the game's tournament life where the meta up top changed and one thing that was thought to be dominant was in turn overcome by something new and unexpected. Remember when Blackheart teams were top tier, or when Spiral/Sent was a tournament winning team?

The game has gone through so many changes in its meta despite never getting any sort of balance patch. This is because, aside from some solid mechanics under a seemingly broken exterior, players were willing to keep pushing the game and the meta.

This is what I'm talking about when I mention these Capcom games (and ST should also be included due to it's excellent meta-balance). Alot of the old players understand that it's more important for the game and the match-ups to be interesting, even if it means that the games aren't perfectly balanced.

I recall Maj (from sonic-hurricane/combovid) writing an article about this, pointing out that, based on many of the top tournament games in the Capcom canon, having a top tier of only 4 characters was enough, just as long as the match ups were interesting.

Heck, we've already seen the opposite of this. Look at Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. This was a game that miraculously nearly took out most of the brokenness inherent in the Versus series, yet at the same time, this is the one game in the series that's totally looked down upon. The problem was that the game was boring. Almost everyone had the same crummy combos without the broken stuff (aside from some Omega Red shenanigans and Wolverine's Berserker Charge bs) that pushed certain characters to the top in prior (and future) games.

I understand that obviously, but patches and revisions were still a thing back then on arcade boards, and they certainly weren't done as impulsively as they are now. That's probably what @d3v was trying to stress.

It's more about the community being more willing to adapt and push the meta than the boards getting patch.

Heck, boards did get patched but at times, the community would reject the changes. Take a look at 3rd Strike which had a "Revision B" board that came out a month after release. This revision was universally rejected because it took out some supposedly broken things like unblockables (for Urien, and later on Oro) that players deemed actually made the game more interesting.

 

[Sultani]

mmm.. Just because NRS tried patching stuff and broke other things as a result (see kitana infinite, and multiple attempts at Cyrax bomb trap removal) doesn't mean the patches weren't needed or more time was required to solve real problems. It just means that their patch didn't do what they intended it to.

They try to patch things with good intentions but the implementation has been pretty terrible. obvious bugs and glitches should obviously be patched, but we shouldn't have a very high level of confidence that NRS can do this right.

This doesn't mean patches aren't needed and that people are wrong if they suggest them, it just means NRS sucks at testing the actual effects rather than assuming their intentons are the actual outcome.

 

[FlappyDaniel]

Patches are fine, they fix bugs. BALANCE CHANGES seem to be what people are arguing over. Obviously bugs and things that aren't even supposed to be game mechanics need to be patched, but balancing should wait for at least a good 6 months or so.

 

[YOMI MITYEAP]

I think you aren't seeing how hard it is to actually balance a game.

I know it isn't easy to balance a game, but some things are so obvious like the trident rush that I am very surprised it didn't get nerfed properly. Hell ed boon was happy I took out Theo at evo haha which shows he and NRS knows they missed some changes they could have made for aquaman

 

[Sultani]

I'm just sittin here like... "when is shinnok going to get the other 3/4 of his strings patched in."

doghead.

 

[windsagio]

I'm not sure what else there is to say beyond repeating 'wait and see' almmost killed Injustice, and 'wait and see then do nothing' is in the process of killing MvC3.

Active balance support keeps a game alive. Lack of balance support dooms a game to a slow death.

 

[YOMI DJT]

@GGA Jeremiah is guilty of 1st degree complaining.

His complaints are OD and need to be nerfed.

 

[Scoot Magee]

The amount of garbage that's still in injustice after the 6 month patch should be regarded as proof that the game needs more time to be figured out before final decisions are made. With that said we need more than 6 damn months before a final balance patch. I think we can all agree on this right?