Do Variations have a future in MK?

I don't want to sound mean, but I find that to be very ridiculous in thinking that the time that went into creating variations ate the time that could have gone into several desperately wanted characters.

It's becoming quite aggravating now to keep seeing posts about how so-and-so wants Fujin in, or believes that Tanya should have been in the main roster instead of DLC. Who cares, just be thankful that they either made it into the game as a DLC or had a cameo, whether you think it's worthy enough or not.

They have a huge team that went into this game, a whole lot of people especially seeing how there was like five guys at the beginning. You can't sit here and say that creating variations ate the time that went into creating characters that aren't in because that's certainly not true. When you have a huge ass team that's working day and night to make this game for you, there's quadrants working on one particular group for the game. Some people are working on storyboarding and concepts. Another is their rigging department. And so on.

I made a short animated film in college and that's how it worked. Eight people on this team. At the very beginning we chipped in on concepts. Those who had more knowledge in 3D animation went into that department, which was four. The other four dealt with the 2D aspects of the film. I was apart of the 2D part, so I dealt with whatever role I was given, which was give our main character movement as well as designing concepts for monsters that he should encounter. The other three dealt with character facial movements, coloring, and character placement.

See, just because one section of the team worked on something, the others worked on another part. So... no time was wasted because they wanted to add a variation system to the characters. Those who made up the roster, made up the roster and decided not to include your favorites in.

And I'm sure a lot of people know this, not trying to make you seem stupid or whatever but, sometimes I feel that there are people out there that tend to forget that an animation team can be split up into smaller teams and take on multiple parts of their product, not just as a whole.
 
Dividing special moves and adding a glow affect to certain parts of a costume isn't the same amount of work as creating a character from the ground up. What NRS has done with the variation system is great. Some characters definitely have useless variations, but all sub-system games have useless assets in them. There are useless Grooves in CvS2, useless assists in MvC and useless gems in SFxT. But that shouldn't take away from the entire system itself.

The Variation system is a godsend for character loyalists. I know plenty of people who loved Noob Saibot in MK9, but hated the fact that he was a zoner. The Variation system would have fixed that, allowing for more types of players to access a single character.
 
I hated it. Hated wanting "insert special move" and it not being available because I picked the wrong variation.

I'm a big random character select guy which gets annoying with all of these variations having to look at moves lists every time.

I would prefer 3x the characters instead.
 
How about we get the choice of special moves (broken down into categories of projectiles, charge attacks, and etc.) and also a style of basic moves right before every fight?
 
I believe the Variation system is an MKX thing only. Sure, it was a fun feature to play with, but personally, I prefer a character to have a full moveset from the start. I would rather have a stance change in-game instead. If you could switch Variations in the mid of a round, like you kinda switched styles in MKDA-MKA, that would be alot better, imo.
 
Tanyas Husband said:
I want Fujin in.
Tanya should've been main roster instead of DLC.
Click to expand...

I like how out of my entire post that was somewhat aimed towards you, you take the only part I mentioned Tanya and turned it into where other users are now chipping in.

That was not my point I was trying to make at all and you proved it as well as to why I get so aggravated on these forums with a lot of Tanya fans turning almost every single topic onto her. Please stop talking about her in this thread and go back to the portion of the site that literally is dedicated to her while others can continue discussion about whether or not variations should make a comeback for the next game.
 
Kitty_55 said:
I like how out of my entire post that was somewhat aimed towards you, you take the only part I mentioned Tanya and turned it into where other users are now chipping in.

That was not my point I was trying to make at all and you proved it as well as to why I get so aggravated on these forums with a lot of Tanya fans turning almost every single topic onto her. Please stop talking about her in this thread and go back to the portion of the site that literally is dedicated to her while others can continue discussion about whether or not variations should make a comeback for the next game.
Click to expand...

Okay...wait...lol...wait hold on..
I think it's more funny how you're the one spinning this into a 'Tanya' discussion, when I literally didn't even mention anything about her alone besides how I'll only be using one variation for her, which is still on the topic. You spin things in your own twisted way to make them seem like they're the object of your disgust. I only said what I said quoting you to troll you, clearly. Please, tell me how I made this a Tanya discussion thread.
Besides this:
And I will only be using 1 variations per char besides Tanya anyway.
Click to expand...
Tell me what I said, because I am actually pretty interested to see where exactly you're coming from. You must've gotten me confused with someone else, chile.
 
Kitty_55 said:
I like how out of my entire post that was somewhat aimed towards you, you take the only part I mentioned Tanya and turned it into where other users are now chipping in.

That was not my point I was trying to make at all and you proved it as well as to why I get so aggravated on these forums with a lot of Tanya fans turning almost every single topic onto her. Please stop talking about her in this thread and go back to the portion of the site that literally is dedicated to her while others can continue discussion about whether or not variations should make a comeback for the next game.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, you talked about her as well in your post above. However, I do agree that there is no reason to derail the thread further.
 
Imperatrix Sindel said:
Someone suggested this on Twitter the other day and Boon did not seem to like the idea.
Click to expand...

Damn casuals ruin everything. I thought Fatalities were too easy to do in MK9. Now I acidentally get fatalities sometimes and you can pay to do them even easier. Having variation-specific fatalities would confuse the casuals and that's one reason why we don't have them.

There could be some good ones also. Bat fatality with Summoner Quan Chi, Slow-mo fatality with Nimble Reptile, Demon fatality with Possessed Kenshi, etc. I like when fatalities could only be done by that character. Not just generic ones that could fit anyone.
 
To be honest, I wouldn't mind Variation specific fatalities. I believe they should take away fatalities and just have Brutalities only (maybe just rename them as fatalities for MK11 and beyond). Fatalities just seem too slow now, and the MKX brutalities seem way more entertaining. At this point, I see no reason to the cutscene style fatalities anymore.
 
Here's the problem that I see with having three different fatalities for each character, if it's having variation specific fatalities, they start being cheapened down like it was for Armageddon.

Instead of taking their sweet time in creating sixty something fatalities for each character, they cheapened the way the fatality system worked and made it to where every single character can do the same thing over and over again. I mean, I could memorize the entire input on how to get a twelve hit fatality (Ultimate Fatality as it's called), and perform it with every single character since there's no restrictions. (I think only Sub-Zero and Scorpion had like two or three inputs that were their own, I dunno I might be wrong for that).

Or instead of making fatalities, recreate the brutalities into fatalities. Here's the problem with that, not only would it probably have characters performing similar "fatalities," but you're also destroying one of the major concepts that made Mortal Kombat big.

You can't just take out something that made your product famous in the first place because a few fans tend to find the whole fatality cutscene a wee bit too long. The whole point of a fatality was to take that win and shove it in your opponent's face. Like "Haha, I won, here's your goddamn head in my hand!" I think people wanting to know what the fatalities were going to be like in this game were in the top three of what people wanted to see during pre-production. I don't know what the order would be like but I assume the list of what people were dying to know were:

Story, Characters, Fatalities

I really feel that was it. People weren't pleased when the brutalities were introduced to us, in fact, I can recall plenty thought it was a very dumb concept. Of course, some opinions changed while others have remained, still. Why go through the mess of replacing an iconic feature with a lessened feature that will most like get the fans to become extremely angry, as well as making it feel like I'm being cheated out of a Mortal Kombat since fatalities is part of what makes the game.

Not to mention, would you have to perform some certain action during the matches in order to perform these "fatalities"? Because if so FAUCK that. If I want to win and I successfully did so, but I forgot to hold down the UP button, I can't pull off my fatality? No, huh-uh, sorry. I want inputs, I want the cutscene. So I have to sit for fifteen seconds to see myself winning. Oh whoopy ding dong do.
 
kadell said:
To be honest, I wouldn't mind Variation specific fatalities. I believe they should take away fatalities and just have Brutalities only (maybe just rename them as fatalities for MK11 and beyond). Fatalities just seem too slow now, and the MKX brutalities seem way more entertaining. At this point, I see no reason to the cutscene style fatalities anymore.
Click to expand...

Variation specific fatalities would be demeaning to me seeing as I don't have a lot of options on how to kill my opponent anymore.
How would that work when you turn off variations?
And, remove fatalities all together? I don't think you'll be seeing that, ever. This is Mortal Kombat, famous for Fatalities.
 
theincubuslord said:
I believe the Variation system is an MKX thing only. Sure, it was a fun feature to play with, but personally, I prefer a character to have a full moveset from the start. I would rather have a stance change in-game instead. If you could switch Variations in the mid of a round, like you kinda switched styles in MKDA-MKA, that would be alot better, imo.
Click to expand...

That's just it though. Some of the characters who benefited from the variation system got really good expanded move sets. I'll use Kenshi for example. He got BALANCED(MK9) POSSESSED(A MK9 mix with demon) and KENITSU(MK:DA-MK:A inspired). Now if we were to give Kenshi only one move set then he would not get all these great options. Even if they tried letting you switch on the fly like you previously suggested with the MK:DA-MK:A button switch, it would be heavily unbalanced.

As much as some of us don't wanna face it. Our choice is either let go of expanded move sets and combos and go back to MK9 stlye move sets where we risk many good moves being omitted in the name of roster balancing or continue to allow variations for characters who people would usually pass on but with this system could actually find atleast one variation that tailors to their play style. Atleast that was the idea anyway. Like I've stated in my OP. It was a great idea but not executed to perfection like they might have hoped.

My worst case scenario or maybe solution for lack of a better term would be to only do 2 variations per character since most of us skip one of them anyway and only end up picking 1 or 2 of the variations. It just seems like by the time they get to the 3rd variation, they just run out of ideas or something.
 
Last edited:
I'd be down for having two variations instead of three.

For example, I play as either Sub-Zero's Grandmaster or Cyromancer variations. I don't touch his Unbreakable as much because I find that the ice clone in the Grandmaster variant does much more than the random shield parry, and the aura that he puts on, yeah it's nice to not receive chip damage, but still.

Having two variations, I wouldn't be against that.
 
Kitty_55 said:
I'd be down for having two variations instead of three.

For example, I play as either Sub-Zero's Grandmaster or Cyromancer variations. I don't touch his Unbreakable as much because I find that the ice clone in the Grandmaster variant does much more than the random shield parry, and the aura that he puts on, yeah it's nice to not receive chip damage, but still.

Having two variations, I wouldn't be against that.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way with this. I only use two/three variations with every characters except Mileena (Etheral and Ravenous are my favorites, while Piercing dominates) and Kotal Kahn (Sun/Blood are my favorites, while War dominates). I also use all of Kitana's variations, but they could give Jade her moveset back for MK11.
 
Is there a variation in the game more useless than Ethereal Mileena? You are giving up tons of damage from combos enders you in the other variations for a useless teleport
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top