Discussion Patches overwhelmingly help NRS games not hurt them

[Scoot Magee]

If there's going to be a final patch it should be after 1 year at least imo if it's practical for the developers. Usually the DLC isn't even out for that long before the final patch is released. We have to rely on the patch system because it's not like NRS puts out rebalanced expansions on the original game unless you count the 6 month in komplete editions.

Nobody want's a broken game. People are just paranoid considering what has happened with the other nrs games regardless of if you think they're better or worse as of now. IMO they are better but still not really what I'd look for in a fighting game. You can compare good vs bad changes all day but there's still a ton of stupid shit in the game that wasn't fixed and can be considered bad non changes.

Small patches to fix things that are simply retarded are fine imo. When it comes to basic balance though I say wait a little regardless of what you think you know. The testers put in a lot of work and I'd like to see how things pan out. The 6 month time frame is main hurdle here though.

On another note is it true after submitting a certain amount of patches Sony and MS start to charge per patch?

 

[Rude]

all the frames arent even right unfortunately tho (like it says scorpions mid minion is -21 but it is like -6 haha). I think kitanas still could do some more and make sure they use all her variations (haven't seen mournful at all) and i say the same for all the other characters as well. If she is bad (and i say if because i am not jumping the gun this early), well i would have to wonder after, is she bad where there are multiple matchups she does horrible in or is she bad where she has lots of 5 5s and 4 6s and doesn't beat anyone? Because if that is the case, yeah a buff would help her but she would still be able to be used in tourny confidently.

Have you looked in on the Kitana community?

They're trying. If it were the usual suspects, or people with a history of agendas saying she is bad, that's one thing.

But when almost EVERY Kitana player says it? Maybe there IS a problem beyond Kitana mains not trying hard enough.

Look, i understand the dislike for early patching. I get it. However, people should at LEAST be allowed to say, "This is a problem, maybe it needs to be fixed."

To use an Injustice comparison, if that game hadn't been patched early, it would have died. F23 breath was an INFINITE against characters like Ares. That should never fly.

In general, i don't believe in absolutes. So i don't believe in never patching or constant patching.

I believe in patching when its needed. Removing infinites, glitches, ToD's, that kind of thing.

It may be too soon for an actual balance patch, but at least let's talk about it.

Looking at what we struggle with helps us understand the game better. Nothing calls attention faster than a cry for a nerf. That's when players look at a situation, break it down, and see if its needed.

Can we at least talk about potential problems in the game?

 

[Big Pampering]

Why do people say 'mid tier' like it's a dirty word? Not every character can be S+.

Every game needs its mid tier

Its not good because at a high level you need high mid at least to consistently win. Every mid tier character might win once or twice but very unlikely. The balance we should strive for is when characters are good enough that people dont know who is mid tier because they are all good and close to each other. You have a good game with like 2/3 of the cast in the top 10 conversation. Just my opinion

 

[YOMI MITYEAP]

Have you looked in on the Kitana community?

They're trying. If it were the usual suspects, or people with a history of agendas saying she is bad, that's one thing.

But when almost EVERY Kitana player says it? Maybe there IS a problem beyond Kitana mains not trying hard enough.

Look, i understand the dislike for early patching. I get it. However, people should at LEAST be allowed to say, "This is a problem, maybe it needs to be fixed."

To use an Injustice comparison, if that game hadn't been patched early, it would have died. F23 breath was an INFINITE against characters like Ares. That should never fly.

In general, i don't believe in absolutes. So i don't believe in never patching or constant patching.

I believe in patching when its needed. Removing infinites, glitches, ToD's, that kind of thing.

It may be too soon for an actual balance patch, but at least let's talk about it.

Looking at what we struggle with helps us understand the game better. Nothing calls attention faster than a cry for a nerf. That's when players look at a situation, break it down, and see if its needed.

Can we at least talk about potential problems in the game?

i dnt care about potential problem talk, but when people declare without doubt something is bad or good, that is where many ppl get annoyed and then the arguments begin. When i see stuff like "Sub zero is S+ tier" or etc., that is where the issues come up.

 

[M2Dave]

Why do people say 'mid tier' like it's a dirty word? Not every character can be S+.

Every game needs its mid tier

Mid tier in Mortal Kombat 9 is low tier. LOL.

 

[Scoot Magee]

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.


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.

Also this post needs to be read by more people. I remember making a comment that character balance is not really the most important aspect of a fighting game and people thought it must have been a joke. All this is true, when a game is good and interesting people play it and rip it apart.I personally didn't play marvel but ST and 3s are great games regardless of balance.

I'm not saying MKX should go unpatched for good but it's good to know how "balance changes" can make a game worse in the eyes of the players.

 

[M2Dave]

I'm not saying MKX should go unpatched for good but it's good to know how "balance changes" can make a game worse in the eyes of the players.

Mortal Kombat X is definitely not heading into the complex direction as described by d3v. If every character is going to be running and doing 50/50 mix ups six months from now on, the game will become shallow very, very quickly.

 

[Slips]

Also this post needs to be read by more people. I remember making a comment that character balance is not really the most important aspect of a fighting game and people thought it must have been a joke. All this is true, when a game is good and interesting people play it and rip it apart.I personally didn't play marvel but ST and 3s are great games regardless of balance.

I'm not saying MKX should go unpatched for good but it's good to know how "balance changes" can make a game worse in the eyes of the players.

I actually agree with that post, but like you said, those games are essentially revisions of previous games made years before. (patches)

And years is something we don't have. We have 6 months lol.

I agree if we knew NRS supported their games for more than 6 months we could take the 'wait and see' approach more. But these are the cards we have been dealt with as a community, and we have to make the most of it.

 

[UsedForGlue]

I agree.

The funny thing is, this game is incredibly well balanced currently, considering its a second patch, and the first didn't really change anything major.

The only things that are obvious to me currently are:

Quan Chi being able to summon a bat while a trance is active.
Raiden one bar corner damage of 48%.
Raiden normal shocker being only -7 on block.
Reptile having slightly too light damage, by about 2-3% max.
Enron Black HKD wake up up window is too tight
Kitana Infinite.
Kung Jin damage reduction of 2-3%.
Faster start up on Mileena's F3 (I think its F3?)
Unbreakable Aura possibly needing a damage buff, 3-5% max.
Cyromancer F42 Grab needing absolute advantage.
Slightly longer recovery on KL Buzz Saw low hat.
Ermac meter building glitch.
Online match making "Connection to online" after each game.

No doubt I have missed some stuff, and considering there is a ton of characters, all with 3 variations, it is incredible how well this game is balanced.

And yes, I love talking about the game, fixes, buffs, normalising, and what could be done, and because this is a forum its perfectly acceptable, don't get expressed opinions somehow confused with "demands" or "cries".

Don't be a MKX Nazi, I am 100% up for having a finely tuned game.

 

[Zoidberg747]

Its not good because at a high level you need high mid at least to consistently win. Every mid tier character might win once or twice but very unlikely. The balance we should strive for is when characters are good enough that people dont know who is mid tier because they are all good and close to each other. You have a good game with like 2/3 of the cast in the top 10 conversation. Just my opinion

16 bit consistently won in Injustice with a lower mid tier character. People have won EVO with mid tier characters in street Fighter.

This whole "Play high tier or lose" mentality is dumb. If you want to play high tier thats totally cool, but dont constantly tell mid and low tier players that they wont win. Mid and low tier players actually have many advantages including the fact that no ones prepares for their characters lol.

 

[Jeffreys]

I actually agree with that post, but like you said, those games are essentially revisions of previous games made years before. (patches)

And years is something we don't have. We have 6 months lol.

I agree if we knew NRS supported their games for more than 6 months we could take the 'wait and see' approach more. But these are the cards we have been dealt with as a community, and we have to make the most of it.

6 Months is exactly the reason why NRS should not rush, wait till most of the tech is found by then and make a judgement call on who actually needs buffs- and if a character is actually too powerful. If NRS actually was planning on patching this game after 6 months then your argument would have more merit, otherwise it just turns into Injustice where Batgirl, MMH, and Aquaman, or the top 5 in MK9 which dominated their respective games because we dont properly identify what needs proper buffing and nerfing.

 

[d3v]

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?

The problem is that they patch too quickly. Basically, their patch schedule means that they need to do band aid patches and can't really do any long term observation, planning and testing.

IMO, NRS really needs to take a look at the model adopted by Capcom, Iron Galaxy and Lab Zero where patches take time to come out and take long term tournament data into consideration.

 

[M2Dave]

1This whole "Play high tier or lose" mentality is dumb. If you want to play high tier thats totally cool, but dont constantly tell mid and low tier players that they wont win.
Mid and low tier players actually have many advantages including the fact that no ones prepares for their characters lol.

Stop selling bills, fool. They most likely won't win.

I am certain if you did a scientific study of the characters that players use to place top 8 at major tournaments, the statistics would most likely be overwhelmingly in the top tier characters' favor.

The "preparation advantage" is a myth in most circumstances. Before I placed top 8 with Freddy at Evolution, I did not give a damn about Kano, Noob, Sheeva, Sindel, etc. I knew who the characters were that I had to prepare for (i.e., Cage, Cyrax, Kabal, Kung Lao, Smoke, etc.). I also doubt Sonic Fox gave a damn about Ares and Joker when he won Evolution last year.

 

[Zoidberg747]

Stop selling bills, fool. They most likely won't win.

I am certain if you did a scientific study of the characters that players use to place top 8 at major tournaments, the statistics would most likely be overwhelmingly in the top tier characters' favor.

The "preparation advantage" is a myth in most circumstances. Before I placed top 8 with Freddy at Evolution, I did not give a damn about Kano, Noob, Sheeva, Sindel, etc. I knew who the characters were that I had to prepare for (i.e., Cage, Cyrax, Kabal, Kung Lao, Smoke, etc.). I also doubt Sonic Fox gave a damn about Ares and Joker when he won Evolution last year.

Of course it would be in the top tier characters favor, I never said it was a frequent occurence. Just that it could happen.

 

[d3v]

16 bit consistently won in Injustice with a lower mid tier character. People have won EVO with mid tier characters in street Fighter.

This whole "Play high tier or lose" mentality is dumb. If you want to play high tier thats totally cool, but dont constantly tell mid and low tier players that they wont win. Mid and low tier players actually have many advantages including the fact that no ones prepares for their characters lol.

Just looking at the games at EVO since 2009

2009

• SFIV - Ryu - high/top tier
• ST - Balrog - top tier
• MvC2 - Santhrax (Storm/Sent/Commando) - god tier
• GG/\C - Eddie - top tier
• 3rd Strike - Chun Li -god tier
• SoulCal IV - Ivy - Mid tier

2010

• SSFIV - Ryu - high/top tier
• Tekken 6 - Hwoarang - mid tier
• TvC - Zero/Alex/Tekkaman Blade - top tier
• Melty - VSion, HKohaku - mid/high tier
• ST - Zangief - high tier

2011

• SSFIVAE - Fei Long - top tier
• MvC3 - Wesker/Haggar/Phoenix - god tier
• MK9 - Kung Lao - top tier
• BBCT - Hakumen - mid tier(?)
• Tekken 6 - Bob - top tier

2012

• SSFIVAE2012 - Akuma - top tier
• UMvC3 - Mag/Dorm/Doom, Mag/Dorm/Phoenix - top tier
• SFxT - Rolento/Ryu - top tier
• MK9 - Kung Lao - top tier
• KoFXIII - Duo Lon, Kim, Chin - mid to high tier
• SoulCal V - Tira - mid

2013

• SSFIVAE2012 - Gen - mid tier
• UMvC3 - Team Flocker (Zero/Vergil/Hawkeye) - top tier
• Injustice - Superman - top tier
• Melee - Fox/Falco - top tier
• KoFXIII - EX Kyo/Benimaru/Chin, EX Kyo/Benimaru/Kim, Kim/Benimaru/Chin, Benimaru/Takuma/Chin - mid to high tier
• SFxTekken 2013 - Jin/Alisa - top tier
• Tekken Tag 2 - Devil Jin/Bruce, Dragunov/Marduk, Heihachi/Lars - mid to top tier
• MK9 - Cyrax - top tier
• Persona 4 Arena - Aigis - top tier

2014

• USFIV - Rose - top tier
• UMvC3 - Team JWong (Wolverine/Storm/Akuma) - mid to top tier
• Melee - Fox - top tier
• Killer Instinct - Sadira/Jago - mid to top tier
• BB:CP - Litchi - top tier
• KoFXIII - EX Iori/Mr. Karate/Kim - top tier
• Injustice - Batgirl - top tier
• Tekken Tag 2 - Heihachi/Armor King - high to top tier

While mid tier can win, a good number of the winners have been using high to top tier characters.

Mid tiers winning are rarer and aren't as consistent. Heck, Xian has basically admitted that he will never win Evo again with Gen, which is why he started playing other characters (Poison, Zangief).

 

[Zoidberg747]

Just looking at the games at EVO since 2009

2009

• SFIV - Ryu - high/top tier
• ST - Balrog - top tier
• MvC2 - Santhrax (Storm/Sent/Commando) - god tier
• GG/\C - Eddie - top tier
• 3rd Strike - Chun Li -god tier
• SoulCal IV - Ivy - Mid tier

2010

• SSFIV - Ryu - high/top tier
• Tekken 6 - Hwoarang - mid tier
• TvC - Zero/Alex/Tekkaman Blade - top tier
• Melty - VSion, HKohaku - mid/high tier
• ST - Zangief - high tier

2011

• SSFIVAE - Fei Long - top tier
• MvC3 - Wesker/Haggar/Phoenix - god tier
• MK9 - Kung Lao - top tier
• BBCT - Hakumen - mid tier(?)
• Tekken 6 - Bob - top tier

2012

• SSFIVAE2012 - Akuma - top tier
• UMvC3 - Mag/Dorm/Doom, Mag/Dorm/Phoenix - top tier
• SFxT - Rolento/Ryu - top tier
• MK9 - Kung Lao - top tier
• KoFXIII - Duo Lon, Kim, Chin - mid to high tier
• SoulCal V - Tira - mid

2013

• SSFIVAE2012 - Gen - mid tier
• UMvC3 - Team Flocker (Zero/Vergil/Hawkeye) - top tier
• Injustice - Superman - top tier
• Melee - Fox/Falco - top tier
• KoFXIII - EX Kyo/Benimaru/Chin, EX Kyo/Benimaru/Kim, Kim/Benimaru/Chin, Benimaru/Takuma/Chin - mid to high tier
• SFxTekken 2013 - Jin/Alisa - top tier
• Tekken Tag 2 - Devil Jin/Bruce, Dragunov/Marduk, Heihachi/Lars - mid to top tier
• MK9 - Cyrax - top tier
• Persona 4 Arena - Aigis - top tier

2014

• USFIV - Rose - top tier
• UMvC3 - Team JWong (Wolverine/Storm/Akuma) - mid to top tier
• Melee - Fox - top tier
• Killer Instinct - Sadira/Jago - mid to top tier
• BB:CP - Litchi - top tier
• KoFXIII - EX Iori/Mr. Karate/Kim - top tier
• Injustice - Batgirl - top tier
• Tekken Tag 2 - Heihachi/Armor King - high to top tier

While mid tier can win, a good number of the winners have been using high to top tier characters.

Mid tiers winning are rarer and aren't as consistent. Heck, Xian has basically admitted that he will never win Evo again with Gen, which is why he started playing other characters (Poison, Zangief).

You guys do realize that was what I was getting at right? Of course more people use high tier and of course more high tiers win, that's common sense. But you basically just proved my point because if someone can win EVO with a mid tier then it is not impossible for someone to do it again.

 

[d3v]

You guys do realize that was what I was getting at right? Of course more people use high tier and of course more high tiers win, that's common sense. But you basically just proved my point because if someone can win EVO with a mid tier then it is not impossible for someone to do it again.

As I mentioned, the guy with arguably the most famous mid tier win in recent memory (Xian with Gen in 2013) has already stated that he will never be able to repeat it again. Statistically, the odds are just against you when using mid tier.

 

[M2Dave]

But you basically just proved my point because if someone can win EVO with a mid tier then it is not impossible for someone to do it again.

Many things in life are not impossible like MBing Scorpion's 20F teleport on reaction in Injustice, but it is most likely not going to happen.

 

[Dirtylova]

You forgot to mention how NRS Nerfed mk9 Baraka and left KABAL the way he was. Why did they leave him? Cause they nerfed and buffed and nerfed and buffed till they couldn't anymore. Just leave the damn game the way it is for now. At least up until evo.

Glitches, infinites etc of course should get dealt with, not a block string YOU can't deal with RRRRRR

#instaBANCRYbabies

 

[CY MasterHavik]

MK9: Yes I agree.

Injustice: In the long run no ti didn't. Why?Well no matter what happened people got tired of the game gettign changed and just wanted it to let tired.

I hope MK10 doesn't get patched until after EVO. I only wanna see two patches. I mean games like Tekken don't need 100 patches. Every other modern fighter is ran into the ground with multiple patches.

 

[THTB]

The problem is that they patch too quickly. Basically, their patch schedule means that they need to do band aid patches and can't really do any long term observation, planning and testing.

IMO, NRS really needs to take a look at the model adopted by Capcom, Iron Galaxy and Lab Zero where patches take time to come out and take long term tournament data into consideration.

If NRS waited, MK9 would have been dead by the time 6 months hit. And the same applies for Injustice.

People already do not look at NRS games positively on a competitive scale, and that's ignoring the patches. That is a major difference with them to the companies you listed. Even then, Capcom's fucked up in the department of patching before, as well, with SFxT (which still had problems after the patch, but the lack of doing anything completely killed the game before the patching even started).

 

[dookieagain]

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.


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.

You avoided the actual point. I didn't say anything about how long it took MvC2 to reach stagnation or how 3s or MvC2 are bad to watch. Also B-revision of SF3 is neither here nor there. It wasn't a serious effort to balance the game, it just made even fewer characters viable in high level play.

The point is after a certain amount of time it was realized that there were characters who could invalidate the bulk of the cast.

Also with youtube, and training mode, and the much larger current playerbase the odds of a game having a meta that shifts much after 4-6 months is pretty low anymore. What's the last game where the tier list radically changed after 3 months of exploration without patches involved?

Everyone had pegged Superman, Black Adam, and Aquaman in Injustice by the end of month 1. Everyone knew that Sadira/Jago/Saberwulf was the top tier of KI season 1 from week 3. Even in MK9 people spotted Kung Lao and Kabal early and I know the Stryker forum was aware that he was bottom 5 within 2 weeks.

We move faster now, because there's a lot more access to information.

What I said is that in competitive play those games have a tiny pool of viable characters. Personally I think that's a bad thing. If you don't that's fine. But I think praising games where you lose on character select and literally cannot reasonably compete with the bulk of the cast is silly.

I'm a character loyalist in general. I have to like the character I am playing, and it sucks to know that no matter how much I like Stryker in MK9, or Ibuki in 3s, or Jill in MvC2, that if I care about being able to compete I need to play a different character. Not just that, but I need to play from a tiny pool of characters.

I don't think anyone wants anymore games where 80-90% of the cast cannot even hope to get top 3 at a major. Maybe you do, but to me the whole reason to balance patch is to get more of the cast viable and let players have an opportunity to win with any character they choose.

Before you tell me that that's impossible, I'd argue that several recent games are there, or close to there. Killer Instinct has large weeklies that have had maybe 2/3 of the cast win. Skullgirls has almost entirely viable characters even though like Marvel it's a team based game. USFIV has character specialists for almost everyone and even low-mid characters are known to win majors from time to time and tends to have varied top 8s even with extremely strong characters like Evil Ryu.

 

[Big Pampering]

16 bit consistently won in Injustice with a lower mid tier character. People have won EVO with mid tier characters in street Fighter.

This whole "Play high tier or lose" mentality is dumb. If you want to play high tier thats totally cool, but dont constantly tell mid and low tier players that they wont win. Mid and low tier players actually have many advantages including the fact that no ones prepares for their characters lol.

Dont compare this to street fighter it is completely different. Also im sure 16bit knows this isnt me blowing him up but i think you need to look up the word win in the dictionary. 16 bit did pretty much what could be done with catwoman at a major.

 

[Big Pampering]

Did i just see someone suggest kung lao nerfs and subzero buffs at the same time. Smh

 

[Sonho]

Quan Chi being able to summon a bat while a trance is active.

Removing the ability to summon the bat during trance is gonna hurt Quan even more then just a little abit (if you ask me). However, increasing the delay before you can resummon the bat after a use would make abit more sense