I guess I will weigh in on this.
First and foremost, I want to thank all the players who came out and tested the game along with us. I already personally knew everyone by KrayzieBone and Jason Wilson previously, so it was nice to meet them, along with all the NRS staff we got to talk with.
The second thing I should point out is, the reason why I don't really play MK9 in tournaments, or at least why I don't seriously compete when I do get the chance to participate, is because I am terrible at the game and have no time to practice. The level you see me at right now is barely beyond where I was after 4 1/2 days of testing. I felt bad because I had to learn quite a bit more in the first few days just to catch up to everyone else in our group of 5, and then I found myself being most useful testing out tactics in matches with Konqrr and TomBrady. I played the game for over 60 hours while I was there, and I have not played the game for 60 hours in the last 10 months. Even the Demo I only played one time with DarkRob iirc.
I was working at a Pharmacy in a supermarket as a technician when I got the phone call. I had some prior knowledge that "something" was rumbling in the MK world, but I didn't know exactly what to expect. I thought at most, maybe an email based interview about what I'd like to see in the game. When my phone rang on the day I was to expect an email, and I didn't recognize the number, I said to my supervising Pharmacist (who is a very chill middle aged guy) "I think this is pretty important." So we listened to the message on my voicemail and it was Hector. I was pretty much blown away at the hint of info he was giving me.
I left work shortly after and called Hector back. He started getting into the details, stopped himself, and said "Well wait, this is assuming you even want to do this..." and I was like "Uhhh yes? I'm in, 100%." So he explained to me why I was contacted, that he researched my credibility in the community, and thought it made sense to get me involved, as he said "I can see you're legit, if you weren't I wouldn't be talking to you, so I know your input will be valuable.". I want to really, truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank the guys who put in a good word for me. The phrase of the conversation that night was something like "They said it would be a crime if we didn't get you out here." After that I told my mother the news, and called the SP at work and said "It's what you think, I need off next week." to which he said "Hey you gotta do what you gotta do, I'll take care of it."
To give you guys an idea on how crunched for time Hector and Paulo were, the phone call I got was like, February 4th, so we went out about 10 days later. Given my very outspoken history on how much I loathe the direction they took MK after the arcade era ended, testing MK9 was the absolute last thing I ever thought I would do for MK. I was pretty much convinced that every couple years we would all get our hopes up and be let down time after time, for as long as we stuck around in the community. When MKvDC came out, I saw ONE clip from a video on youtube of the game and said "No thanks." MK9 was different, there was a grasping level of interest, and I really wanted to be involved somehow, but never ever thought it would actually happen.
I flew out with Check and Tom Brady from Newark Airport, all on the same flight. We had some drinks at a pub in the airport near our gate and talked about the things we were concerned about going in. I also hadn't been on a plane in over 10 years so that was neat to experience again. When we landed, we met up with Konqrr and Krayzie and we were off. It took us a while to lock down our first cab. All the travel arrangements were a bit confusing, I had never been picked up from an airport in this manner. The hotel was fun, playing Konqrr and Check in UMK3 the first night, and realizing we'd never had a moment to do that again in the hotel, the verbal onslaughts, the "challenge", the 7-11 stops, late night fast food runs, Taco Bell FTW I said EFFTEEDUBBLEYEH.
To touch on a few things mentioned or not mentioned here with a follow up, yes there was direct mention that they would "like" to have us back for the next game, yes we did video interviews in the middle of testing, yes we played UMK3 in Goro's Lair, yes we drank a ridiculous amount of soda, yes Ed Boon balked at the term "meter" and yes, they wanted us out there for 2 months originally. Two months with 5 to 8 testers working full time would have been more than enough to get the majority of the bugs and gameplay issues out upon initial release. There would have only been need for maybe a couple hotfixes, instead of several major patches. I don't think we had enough time to convey the importance of the massive scrutinizing of the gameplay we were doing. It didn't take long for me to realize that even though this was the veil they put over us to get us out, they really weren't 100% looking for us to make the perfect MK in terms of balance and fighting mechanics. They definitely wanted us to help them with more simplistic/general concepts like "This character is too weak" "This character is too strong" "This character is too slow" "This character has no useful moves" and not, "This character's standing 1 should 3 have more frames of recovery" or "This character shouldn't be able to combo off his throw" "This move should push them back more" etc.
Getting into the legality of the whole thing, the story I was told by NRS is that this was brought up way before and WB had reservations about bringing in people they didn't know or couldn't trust. This was mostly due to the game content and anything we couldn't tell any of you based on a non-disclosure agreement. They didn't want unannounced or hidden characters leaked, pictures/videos of the game, which is understandable, and other things typical to letting pure fans into their domain. Basically, it came down to not being worth the money or risk involved. Well, somehow, they convinced them to do it and there we were.
I was also told that one of the very people most against the whole idea thought it turned out to be a great thing after all. We really kept a tight lid on things, and I would say only after Hector and Paulo started dropping our names in the stream chats on VSM that we were there, and jokingly blaming us for over-nerfing characters before release (lol) did we really start being more open about it. In fact, until Check made this post, it was still not truly public knowledge. Some of you are probably actually mad at me right now for not telling you I went out! At the very beginning we were told that if it got out the whole thing could get squashed. The main goal was to not make people jealous or vocal about the testing process because there are those who felt they should have been chosen and perhaps not who actually went. Again, the only reason I got to go was based on the suggestion from those involved.
We went in, did the paperwork, had the orientation, tour, etc, went to work. As soon as I sat down and went to try out the PDP stick, I press the start button on the main menu...aaand my phone starts ringing. My girlfriend was bawling on the phone so I run out to the lobby to find out that she lost her job, this coming a day after my boss called me to tell me our store was closing. So this was not a great way to start things off.
The first characters I got into were Sonya and Smoke, and then eventually Cyber Sub-zero. These characters really jumped out at me. Everything I learned from playing Tom Brady in Smoke vs "Coke"-zero matches was used against the players at the MK9 release party I went to and won in PA. After that within a month everyone was better than me LMAO. My biggest contribution to the game is the 9% Smoke teleport punch. It was originally 5%. Tom Brady argued "I can take teleport punches from this character all day and never stop doing what I'm doing. This character is trash. He is bottom tier. He is the worst character in the game. Give him that 9%, he needs it."
Well I shouldn't say that, I found a serious glitch in tag mode vs Quan Chi (which stemmed from another instance of the same glitch). Originally, and I mean anyone could have found this pretty easily, during Quan Chi's XRay, I noticed I could jump with Raiden I believe it was, and that Raiden flinched, but still took the XRay. So then I tried it with a special move, to see if it would do anything, so I teleported, Raiden actually went behind Quan Chi, and was then instantly sucked back into the XRay. After that we tried moves that would be fast enough to make contact with Quan Chi, and used the Force Push or maybe the TKS with Ermac, I don't remember which exactly or if it took damage, but it did make the green glow around Quan Chi. We could never find anything to interrupt the XRay itself. However, I tested tag mode with the tag option, and you could switch characters in the middle of the XRay. The bonus to this would be, if you had a character with 25% health left, when the XRay connects, you could tag out on the first 5%, and let the second character take the rest of the damage, saving your first character when they should be killed. I recorded these glitches on the recording station and that was the end of that.
I found another tagging issue where after certain throws, I think ones that change the camera position like Scorpion's at least did at the time, if you would tag out before your opponent got up, your second character would appear right next to the thrown opponent even if they were across the screen from as result of the throw, creating a serious pressure scenario on any throw with that property. If anyone else who was there remembers this, please point out anything I forgot.
While Check's main gripe was the blockstun directly, mine was a lot to do with the push back, which is sort of an indirect defense issue. When a spammable move doesn't push a character back, you tend to get locked down by the move very easily in close range, and very simple things in the game, to me, had too little recovery time, or not enough push back, ie: opponent reaction. This makes the blockstun seem outrageous because the other important elements of defense are not there. Originally, D3 had NO pushback at all, and when I first asked about it, I was basically told it would stay that way. I really pushed for this to change, and insisted that the pushback be halfway between nothing, and what D4 did while we were there. D3 is a low poke, a quick "get off me" move when you are caught blocking low. I actually turned the D3 into an offensive move and a corner tactic based on the no pushback property. Even though it does no damage, it's still annoying. I also asked for it to do at least enough damage to trigger the life drain blood animation, I mean for Pete's sake, it does less than most chip moves because it does the LEAST AMOUNT OF DAMAGE POSSIBLE ABOVE ZERO.
The reasoning was sort of like "We don't want people ducking and blocking all day" but that's going to happen when you don't have a clear way out, and you have to guess or be a Jedi to counter. Recovery times in the game to me are more important than the blockstun at times. Reducing blockstun is one way to fix things, but increasing recovery times is what I really felt was the issue. For example, Nightwolf's Arrow, a simple basic projectile, had advantage iirc, mid screen, point blank range on block. I really don't know of many fighting games where that exists. It was like he could run with his arrows loaded and just pepper you with them and advance immediately. While I understand there are "ways" out of stuff, it just didn't make sense to me for that move to be like that. The character can throw another projectile before I recover from block, which the blockstun in relative terms, isn't that much.
I was really thrown by the pure spamming of moves in general. It just didn't feel right, but then I took into account of the wide screen factor, and that in order for a projectile to get across the screen and be a threat, things need to be at least a little spammable, somewhere between what they were and what I would suggest for a 4:3 game. Baraka's Spark and Kano's Knives were completely outrageous. Ground projectiles that could be spammed to the point where the first one was still over your head by the time another comes out, like Kabal's air fireballs. Also, Baraka's horizontal dashing double stab, the normal version, had like 3/4 screen range or more, was lightning fast and I think even had a blockstun infinite, or extreme, to the frame, tick level openings, same for Noob Saibot's clones, if you got hit by one, you HAD to block the next. I don't know if he's still like that to any degree now but they are slower undoubtedly.
I could go on for way too long about things but I think I'll wrap it up with Tom Brady, Check and I somehow missing our flight home and having to sleep in the airport. The woman who announced the boarding didn't speak English very well and I personally believe she said the wrong gate. There was no one else around getting up when she made the call which should have directed us, and there was a huge lightning strike in the yard, plus a bunch of passengers redirected to our terminal. Very confusing. Talking with Check about the future potential with NRS and talking to Bill about what the Hell are we going to do now because the game needed so much work with no time to do it was how I remember the end. I knew t would come down to community input and patches, and to be honest, there's still a long way to go.
I'd love to go back, but only if our suggestions are taken more seriously and it's fully conveyed why we nitpick things the way we do. This is not to say that nothing beyond the serious issues were addressed, but I agreed that the game really needed to be taken back to formula on some level. There were too many things that were basically "It'll be fixed in the next game." In our interviews I remember saying the game was fun to play, had elements that reminded me a lot of the 2D games and that a lot of players will enjoy it, I still stand by this. Unfortunately, the game wasn't quite good enough IMHO to warrant me devoting any time to it, and honestly, even if it was I don't think I could anyway. After this experience, I do have more confidence in NRS to make a better game for MKX, and if I have to sacrifice a spot to get a top level MK9 player out, I'd do it.
Edit: I'm sure I'll remember more stuff as days go on for this thread, I'll add more if I do.
. Konqrr - if you wouldn't mind letting it out, What kind of stuff did Shang have back in the day?
. I'm sure we all have mixed feelings about the post-arcade games, but I don't think Netherrealm/Midway had much of a choice considering the market conditions at the time, 2D games were dead in the water until the current generation of consoles, it's very much easier said than done to have gone straight from MK3 to MK9 imo.moves are trash, lol
