The Problems I've Had With MK9

T

TheSaderV

New member
Recently I've been trying to get into MK9, but some problems I ran into really just made the whole experience frustrating for me:

-Character Balance
I saw on another forum someone saying that MK9 is balanced, but from my experience, characters such as Kung Lao, Liu Kang, Raiden, Cyrax, Sektor, Johnny Cage, and Quan Chi are characters that are clearly more preferred when it comes to juggling and chaining combos. Raiden's teleport is super fast, the same with Kung Lao's. Raiden's Dabu-Dabu-Dah! attack is SUPER fast and puts the players on constant defense. Quan Chi's mind control has monster range and he's also got combo with a low hit immediately following up with an overhead that is incredibly hard to react to. Cyrax's bombs are easily spammable and make for an easy juggle set up, same with Sketor's rockets, not to mention that uppercut teleport. I've also noticed player's who play as Liu Kang to use a particular combo that launches their enemy off the ground and then can just chain that combo again and again and soon I find myself pushed to the other side of the screen getting juggled in the corner. I know I could just learn to use those same characters, but I just can't but help feel that NetherRealm didn't make such a plethora of characters only for those select few to be used. I tried Baraka, Noob Saibot, and Ermac, but it just seems like they're outmatched against those top tier characters.

-Turtles
I've experienced this type of player predominantly with Sub-Zero and Scorpion. They'll sit on the other side of the screen hiding behind ice clones or spamming kunai on top of hellfire. Whenever I try to get in close, they just use the abilities I just listed or hit me with an uppercut. Noob Saibot was my main so it was easy to spam charge or slide, but I honestly didn't feel any better than I would turtling like the other player.

-Customization
So anyone who has played MK knows about special attacks. Noob's upknee, Kabal's nomad rush, Baraka's spark, etc. I feel like MK would have been a much better game if we had been allowed to customize those specials. What I mean is...Okay, take Kabals rush for example. I have to press back, forward, B (Xbox) to use it. Well, that might not feel very comfortable for me, so what if I could change it to down, forward, B? I think something like that would be incredibly useful. I know you can have your own controller presets, but honestly, I don't know a better preset than default.

-Community
Rage quitters. Lots of rage quitters. I feel that players should not be permitted to leave a game in progress OR if they do leave, the player still in the game gets the satisfaction of being able to perform a fatality or a least a nut punch. Also, and I know not much can be done about this, but there are a lot of arrogant shit heads in this game. I played about four rounds with one guy in particular and when he would win, he'd just t-bag and jump up and down as if he won the World MK Tournament or something. Another guy in a King of the Hill match held the hill for 9 rounds and just smack talked the entire time. So annoying.

Rant over. I want to like this game, but I find little ways to deal with the problems.

Apologize in advance if any grammatical/spelling errors are found in this post. It's late and I'm trying to get this done before work tomorrow.
 
Common consensus is that Sektor is the most balanced character in the game.



No customizing specials. It goes with dedication.
 
The ONLINE is the worst part about this game!!!! I wouldn't mind losing to a fair fight where I at least can move on time. But online, it takes like 10 seconds or more to do a move leaving me vulnerable with every hit. So I can see that being BIG factor for rage quitting.
 
Liu Kang is a great character to use to for corner combos.

I played MK9 the other for the first time since Injustice came out. Played one match online with Liu Kang and they called me a scrub. Lol, they complain too much.
 
TheSaderV said:
Recently I've been trying to get into MK9, but some problems I ran into really just made the whole experience frustrating for me:

-Character Balance
I saw on another forum someone saying that MK9 is balanced, but from my experience, characters such as Kung Lao, Liu Kang, Raiden, Cyrax, Sektor, Johnny Cage, and Quan Chi are characters that are clearly more preferred when it comes to juggling and chaining combos. Raiden's teleport is super fast, the same with Kung Lao's. Raiden's Dabu-Dabu-Dah! attack is SUPER fast and puts the players on constant defense. Quan Chi's mind control has monster range and he's also got combo with a low hit immediately following up with an overhead that is incredibly hard to react to. Cyrax's bombs are easily spammable and make for an easy juggle set up, same with Sketor's rockets, not to mention that uppercut teleport. I've also noticed player's who play as Liu Kang to use a particular combo that launches their enemy off the ground and then can just chain that combo again and again and soon I find myself pushed to the other side of the screen getting juggled in the corner. I know I could just learn to use those same characters, but I just can't but help feel that NetherRealm didn't make such a plethora of characters only for those select few to be used. I tried Baraka, Noob Saibot, and Ermac, but it just seems like they're outmatched against those top tier characters.

-Turtles
I've experienced this type of player predominantly with Sub-Zero and Scorpion. They'll sit on the other side of the screen hiding behind ice clones or spamming kunai on top of hellfire. Whenever I try to get in close, they just use the abilities I just listed or hit me with an uppercut. Noob Saibot was my main so it was easy to spam charge or slide, but I honestly didn't feel any better than I would turtling like the other player.

-Customization
So anyone who has played MK knows about special attacks. Noob's upknee, Kabal's nomad rush, Baraka's spark, etc. I feel like MK would have been a much better game if we had been allowed to customize those specials. What I mean is...Okay, take Kabals rush for example. I have to press back, forward, B (Xbox) to use it. Well, that might not feel very comfortable for me, so what if I could change it to down, forward, B? I think something like that would be incredibly useful. I know you can have your own controller presets, but honestly, I don't know a better preset than default.

-Community
Rage quitters. Lots of rage quitters. I feel that players should not be permitted to leave a game in progress OR if they do leave, the player still in the game gets the satisfaction of being able to perform a fatality or a least a nut punch. Also, and I know not much can be done about this, but there are a lot of arrogant shit heads in this game. I played about four rounds with one guy in particular and when he would win, he'd just t-bag and jump up and down as if he won the World MK Tournament or something. Another guy in a King of the Hill match held the hill for 9 rounds and just smack talked the entire time. So annoying.

Rant over. I want to like this game, but I find little ways to deal with the problems.

Apologize in advance if any grammatical/spelling errors are found in this post. It's late and I'm trying to get this done before work tomorrow.
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sigh....IMO This is laziness at its finest. Blaming everything except your own match up inexperience will NOT make you any better at MK9. People are so spoiled these days they want everything to be brain dead easy and require no effort just so they can get a easy win against better players who took the time to learn the game it's insulting. Yes MK9 has problems (laggy netcode, Cyrax's 100%resets, rage quitters Kabal's dash cancel being broken as hell, frametraps, KENSHI!! and Bird Lao to name a few) but name one fighting game that is perfectly balanced? The truth is all fighting games have their problems but that doesn't mean you can't overcome them if you take the time to learn.
It takes more than just understanding your character to win a match.
 
lariat said:
sigh....IMO This is laziness at its finest. Blaming everything except your own match up inexperience will NOT make you any better at MK9. People are so spoiled these days they want everything to be brain dead easy and require no effort just so they can get a easy win against better players who took the time to learn the game it's insulting. Yes MK9 has problems (laggy netcode, Cyrax's 100%resets, rage quitters Kabal's dash cancel being broken as hell, frametraps, KENSHI!! and Bird Lao to name a few) but name one fighting game that is perfectly balanced? The truth is all fighting games have their problems but that doesn't mean you can't overcome them if you take the time to learn.
It takes more than just understanding your character to win a match.
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While some of the stuff he says is a bit silly I can say that this game's netcode is a downfall. When stuff has button delay and everything like that it is a huge problem in online play and with the horrendous netcode it plays a huge factor in how you play. The MK9 online netcode is shitty and shouldn't be taken seriously. Stuff that you do on MK9 online can't be punished. Offline different story and can be punished. MK9 offline is the only real good way to play this game. The online is a piece of crap for the game. I don't even blame people who rage quit with the crappy netcode.

If you play online and talk about the match up experience. Online it won't matter because you can't punish it. Games like SF, Tekken, and DoA all have good netcodes. MK9 does not have that. So with online for this game and him having frustrations I could see why.

The characters are actually quite unbalanced too. They patched the game so much. The low tiers can't really compete and with all the patches in the end it became a broken game. Even top MK9 players have said this. NRS still needs work on balancing. Honestly Tekken is a better game. It is well balanced and even low tiers can compete. Same with SF. Low tiers can compete too. MK is probably the most unbalanced fighting game out there.

While there is no perfect game balance but fighting games that comes close to that are Tekken and Virtua Fighter.
 
TheSaderV said:
Rage quitters. Lots of rage quitters.
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The undeniable hallmark of a game that's fundamentally unsatisfying. Anyone can stay and play in a good game, win or lose. Poor games, however, expose the limits of peoples' patience... or lack thereof.

MK has never been a wholly satisfying fighting game experience- it's always been a novelty that's relied almost solely on its shock factor. And although it can be argued MK9 is a considerable step up from the earlier games in terms of core gameplay, the game is still aeons behind the standard-setting Japanese fighters. I got my hands on some random Japanese 2D fighter the other day, Shin Koihime... or something, and even that - a by-the-numbers fighting game based on hentai characters, no less - is considerably better put-together than MK9, gameplay-wise.

Gurimmjaw said:
MK is probably the most unbalanced fighting game out there.
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Hyperbole or not, what you allude to really does accentuate the idiocy of Netherregion in not allowing the bosses to be playable.

At least if the OP bosses were selectable combatants, people wouldn't be under any illusion that the game was purporting to be a serious, finely tuned, balanced fighter (which it patently is not). Instead, they decided to deprive fans of some of their favourite combatants and then still proceeded to drop the ball when it came to a balanced roster. And that's not even touching on the abysmal net coding...
 
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Let's be honest, this game is a MAJOR improvement over the last few iterations. NRS is just getting on their feet, I don't know how many times I have to explain that to all of you here who expect a Godly fighting game when they're using this engine for the 2nd time ever. The leaders in the team are also from the early 90's, what do they really know about making a earth shattering game in this day and age? This is why they're expanding and hiring new leads such as Paolo and John, or whatever those two Latino/Hispanic guys' names are.

Tekken's gameplay has been consistent since day one, something that has not occurred with MK. I'll admit, yes Tekken is more balanced than this game, but there are tiers of characters in that game as well. I won an online TTT2 match spamming Kazuya's running jump kick against a dude ranked 6 levels higher. I tried doing that to another player using different characters and he punished my ass. This happens in every fighting game.

Give NRS a chance, they've just basically planted their feet on the ground after so many years in this business.
 
A chance ? They already abandoned MK. Now they are just milking community with Injustice DLC's... WB saved them from bankrupt, but with such support of their products i don't see them heading any other direction but back to bankrupt.
But i guess this is standard situation in console gaming.

P.S
After 2 years there still is no "rematch" button in private/player games... Pathetic
 
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BuGeris said:
A chance ? They already abandoned MK. Now they are just milking community with Injustice DLC's... WB saved them from bankrupt, but with such support of their products i don't see them heading any other direction but back to bankrupt.
But i guess this is standard situation in console gaming.

P.S
After 2 years there still is no "rematch" button in private/player games... Pathetic
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A chance with the next game. They've improved their efforts in Injustice as well. Whether they admit it or not, they were under pressure to sell MK9 by WB, way harder than they were ever pressured at Midway.
 
I've had fun with MP, our WiFi sucks at times, and spam attacks can get frustrating, but it's pretty cool, I've won plenty of games and performed two good fatalities. ^^
 
I thought NRS did a good job with the past MK games, they seem pretty balanced to me. Even if they weren't, I like over powered foes, haha..
 
DeBane said:
Hyperbole or not, what you allude to really does accentuate the idiocy of Netherregion in not allowing the bosses to be playable.
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:laugh:
NRS has never been able to make playable bosses that weren't OP.

Playable bosses wouldn't help the balancing issue.
 
Sniper0092 said:
I like the challenge, it "Badasses" me up. Hehe.
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Play a good Kenshi and it'll break you down.

Araknyd_Commander said:
:laugh:
NRS has never been able to make playable bosses that weren't OP.

Playable bosses wouldn't help the balancing issue.
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Gamecube Deception had balanced Goro and Kahn.
Shinnok wasn't OP in 4
MKvsDC had balanced Kahn and Darkseid (Albeit Kahn was really strong)
MK9 bosses would be balanced if they were playable since everything they do isslow/ punishable. Kahn's unblockable has like 30 frames of startup.
 
back said:
Gamecube Deception had balanced Goro and Kahn.
Shinnok wasn't OP in 4
MKvsDC had balanced Kahn and Darkseid (Albeit Kahn was really strong)
MK9 bosses would be balanced if they were playable since everything they do isslow/ punishable. Kahn's unblockable has like 30 frames of startup.
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I'll give you Deception and 4, but MK4 also wasn't online.
Goro was OP in MK4, and made up for the crappy Shinnok.
Darkseid and Kahn weren't that balanced in MKvsDC. Both were pretty OP.
Even if Kahn has a 30 frame startup in MK9, his moves are way OP and his X-Ray (alone) deals 53% damage.
 
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