The Benefit of 50/50's to the Long Term Success of the MKX Community

[War_Machine_27]

Nope. If safe and/or advantage 50/50s frustrate players who play everyday or multiple times a week and really care about trying to get better, what do you think it does to casual players who don't know how to block most 50/50s? It causes the majority of them to leave the scene due to feeling like they can't win imo

 

[just_2swift]

This thread seems to be going places

 

[coolwhip]

"The casual players wants to be competitive with the best in the world."

Most casuals don't care about that at all and probably never gave it any thought.

 

[IrishMantis]

I have no problem with 50/50
They are a huge part of fighting games and even in a way a frame trap or attack/whiff bait is a form of a read itself.

But what I do have a problem with in this game is the balance of 50/50s they should never lead to huge dmg, be safe or even plus on block, have armour or break armour, launch meterlessly and even have 50/50 that goes into another 50/50 and for the most part being Unreactable or unfuzzyable

In this game I think Tremor and WG Kotal has good 50/50 design and maybe even Raiden to an extent
I hope they find a good line of balance in their future games

 

[TackyHaddock]

The one complaint about 50/50s that I think is overblown is that they are completely random and thus you always have to make a random guess. If you play more than one or two games against a particular opponent, you should start to get a read on their particular patterns and habits - you can then make "educated" guesses rather than seeing it as completely random. Obviously the better players will be able to make it more unpredictable than others, but there is always some level of habitual play that you should be able to detect. It is one of the more interesting mental elements in the game imo.

The complaint against safe 50/50s is of course valid, given that no matter how "educated" your guess is, you're not getting a diploma. Still their turn.

 

[Jay Rupp]

Over the past year there has been a lot of talk of how 50/50's ruin the game and that guessing right or wrong should not be a part of the equation in winning or losing. Why I do understand the frustration when you are about to win a match that puts you in top 8, only to be stopped by guessing wrong 3 times consecutively against random noob, I do have a big positive that we need to pay attention to.

As we look forward to community growth and MKX and all fighting games to emerge out of the ESports dungeon, we need to pay attention to the biggest part of the growth. The casual player. The casual player is the person who will fuel the growth. Without the casual player, there is no pro player. Every pro player started out as a casual player. That cannot be forgotten.

Lets take a look at the casual player. What does this casual player want? This casual player wants to be able to compete against the worlds best players and maybe win once in a while. The casual player believes they can win because they are the best in their neighborhood, school, or local scene. Now, they may be good, but is he good enough to beat the best players in the world? The answer is maybe. And the main reason for even a maybe is the inclusion of 50/50's in the game. With the inclusion of 50/50's he has the opportunity to get lucky 3 times in a row and eliminate the pro player from an event. This gives the casual player a glimmer of hope in an otherwise futile struggle to be a contender. The glimmer of hope is witnessed by their friends, the stream viewers, and the other casual players.

As these "weekend warriors" become more confident, they decide to take it to the next level and attend the next regional in their area. Now he is bringing his game to the big time. Is he outclassed? Yes. Does he have a chance to eliminate you from the tournament? He sure does! If he can string together some of those 50/50's he has a chance to get out of pools or better! The thing is, that luck will eventually catch up with them and they will guess wrong 50% of the time like he is supposed to. When this happens, they are handled easily by the pro player and they are returned home to work on their game with a new found passion.

This player, at some point, may have knocked us out of the tournament, but it was a good thing overall for all pro players long term. You see, the more times the casual player sees a glimmer of hope, guessing right of 50/50's, the more likely he is to return to challenge you again. The ultimate beauty of it is, though, that if you win just half, or even close to half, of your 50/50's, you will most likely beat the weekend warrior each and every set.

I know this does no good in helping you understand why some random opponent sent you packing at CEO, but if you look at the big picture you will get it. The larger the number of entrants for each of the events, the larger the prize pools. The larger the events, the more exposure for the pro players. The increase in exposure for the pro leads to sponsorship opportunities and other sources of income.

So the next time you get beat by some random that guessed right 14 times in a row, make note that 50/50's are good for the community and that he will be back again. Maybe without a horseshoe up his A#@.

Very well written, it's obvious how passionate you are about MK. I've been saying something very similar to this for a while. In the big picture of things, 50/50s, resets and vortexes are all very good for the longevity of any fighting game. It serves as a cushion for new players to fall back on, which means more people playing. It's insanely fucking annoying being caught in a blender by a less skilled player, but it's a reality in almost every fighter. <3 MK KI SF

 

[Gooberking]

I'm probably not qualified to even have an opinion, but I really don't feel a great need to criticize the game. I realize it may not be the shinny, golden star of what a competitive fighter is imagined to be, but the one thing that MK does better than any other is have something for everyone. The same people consistently preform about the same every time suggesting skill and law of averages does allow the game to have some measure of a competitive side, but if you just want to d2 and x-ray your way to a fatality opportunity, that works too.

I don't envy someone having to sit in a room and ask “how do we make this work for everyone?” Capcom tried to answer that question with SFV and nobody but competitive players are buying it. It's a disaster outside of the competitive world while MKX has done well across the board.

The 50/50's seem like they are a part of an overall plan to give the game a very aggressive nature that indicative the franchise. Along with the “everything chips” thing, you can't sit still in MK. While that forces people to play a certain way, I think it has some befits to it in terms of giving the game an identity and making it viable to observers. The game spectates pretty well and a lot of that comes from the aggressive pacing and the tense feeling of really not having any idea what can happen. If at the high level you guys feel like you really don't have any control over the outcome I see how that would be frustrating, but, to be honest, I don't want to watch competitors shimmy, shimmy, footsie, footsie, shimmy, shimmy their way to a win.

The second we start saying it would be better if it worked more like SF should we just go play SF instead? Can the 50/50 situation be adjusted to make the game more fair for you high level players without compromising a lot of MK's identity or impacting what the rest of us are getting out of it? If not, what's more important, competitive quality or the other stuff? If it was fixed would people be satisfied?

 

[Eddy Wang]

Sorry if I misunderstand, but isn't the whole point of landing a D1 for starting your own pressure or rather "gaining a turn" for lack of a better phrase? I just feel like if all characters' D1 could get stuffed with standing normals, it could cause a lot of balance problems.

D1 in MKX as the way it is, its perfect to start pressure but it wasn't always like that n the past mk fame, imagine that you have a 7f mid that is -5 and has high crushing propriety, anything that comes out fast but no faster than your negative frames is over, will be crushed by mashing d1, d1 d1, so you can't have better rewards, or atempt a string to gain more chip or momentum, you're forced to d1 to avoid the low profiling.
Take in account that the retaliation system of MKX requires you one frame time to let go off block and press another button, so when someone is at -5, by retaliating he is at -4. unless he uses a reversal special move.

People answer anything with d1, its the solution for mostly any frame trap in this game, and also the solution for those who always had a pretty bad offense strategy thinking d1 is the only "poke" in the game, reason why you see players starting offense with d1, the button is just too good.

How were they different in MK9? Did d1s get stuffed by highs in that game? I see your point, but the fact that d1s are crouching attacks makes that seem like a weird solution to mashing even if they hit mid instead of low. Maybe they should be less plus on hit instead, like how Quan's d1 is only plus 3 on hit? That way you couldn't use them to start any guaranteed offense usually unless you're Shinnok with a 7 frame low. That or they could be more minus on block like -10 with more recovery, but again, with a really fast mid or low like Shinnok has that could be overpowering for some characters.

In MK9 d1 were -13 when blocked despites being a 6f mid, so you wouldn't see people mashing it away when someone blocks one, in this MK there are 7f reversals, it wouldn't be fair to them that is why they're not as negative has they used to be, but they never were a tool to start pressure in first place, it was more of a tool to trade against a slower move, so you can reverse someone else's pressure.

 

[FROST_]

You mained Noob in MK9? That's badass. It was so hard to play that character well. The best Noobs I saw were D.R. and Madzin and it was such a hype character, especially once they got the corner combos going! I used him too but as a secondary.

tbh it was i liked the overall design and move set of the character. He reason i barely play mkx because he not in...