My Mortal Kombat-Related Pet Peeve

[emwearz]

I think a lot of peoples problems with Mortal Kombat is how poor it's transition to 3D was. Its 2D versions in the arcade were good, not my taste, but I can see there appeal, all 3D games in the series (other than the newest) I can see why peoples opinions of the series is not high.

[Gamerforlife]

And now for something completely different, anyone check out Mortal Kombat Legacy yet? You can see it by going to machinima.com for the latest episodes or find some on youtube


http://www.machinima.com/

I literally just found out about those today after watching some Sonic for Hire. Pretty decent, although I didn't care for the animated segments. Otherwise, I'm a fan. Already they are much better than the movie.

What caught my attention about the series is the talent. Tahmoh Penikett is a pretty big actor from a sci fi fan's perspective having been in the new Battlestar Galactica series and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Seeing him kind of gave this web only series some credibility in my eyes. They also got Michael Jai White who was awesome in Black Dynamite. I'm going to watch a few more episodes and see how it develops out of curiosity

[o.pwuaioc]

They also got Michael Jai White who was awesome in Black Dynamite. I'm going to watch a few more episodes and see how it develops out of curiosity

And Spawn!!

[Erik_Twice]

Having a dedicated button to "block" makes blocking possible without inputing commands to face the opponent first in case you switch positions.

It's a very important change in mechanics and changes the overall design of the game to reflect that, saying that it's dumb or that other kind of controls are strictly better are short sighted.


It's also more intuitive to input commands based on the relative position of your character in the screen than inputing commands depending on where the character is looking.

Smash, for example, has a dedicated block button. If it didn't, the game wouldn't work becuase the game is designed around free movement from side to side AND blocking forcing you to stand still.

[SplashChick]

I've been following Legacy, it's pretty good so far. I think the last 2 weren't quite as good as the first 3 though.

[SplashChick]

Having a dedicated button to "block" makes blocking possible without inputing commands to face the opponent first in case you switch positions.

It's a very important change in mechanics and changes the overall design of the game to reflect that, saying that it's dumb or that other kind of controls are strictly better are short sighted.


It's also more intuitive to input commands based on the relative position of your character in the screen than inputing commands depending on where the character is looking.

Smash, for example, has a dedicated block button. If it didn't, the game wouldn't work becuase the game is designed around free movement from side to side AND blocking forcing you to stand still.

Agreed 100%.

With Street Fighter and the like I think it's forgivable, however, because having more than 6 buttons in a fighter is just absurd. 6 buttons is the hard limit of fighters, any more and it's destined to be a bad game.

[zxqdms]

Here's some thoughts on blocking with a direction button. This is probably all really basic stuff to anyone who plays competitively, but it might be new to some casual players.

You can think of any game that uses back to block as a game with two block buttons, and only one of them works at any given time. In the games I have played, the button you press is always the direction that is the opposite of where the opponent is located on screen relative to your character. This enables you to put your opponent into a situation where it is difficult to know which block button they should press.

For example, there are situations where if you jump over your opponent and do an air attack, the side you are on will switch right before the attack connects, and if they don't switch their block then you score a hit and most likely a combo. This is called a cross-up. Many cross-ups are easy to block as long as you know the move your opponent just used will cause a cross-up from the distance they jumped from.

Other moves will cross-up or not depending on when they press the attack button while in the air. This is called an ambiguous cross-up, and is preferable, but not all characters have a move that will do this.

Cross-ups can be very effective to perform as an opponent is waking up from a knockdown. Or when an opponent is coming into the fighting area in a game like Marvel vs Capcom. An example of how that would work in the MvC game is calling an assist that throws some projectile at the opponent as their character comes in (which forces them to block as they come in), and then with your main character walk under them to the other side just as they come in so they have to block the opposite way.

Another example of a cross-up is with Dhalsim in Street Figher 4 by using his fireballs and teleport together. You can throw out a fireball and then right before it connects you teleport to the other side, crossing up your opponent so the fireball hits. This means they actually have to block in the direction of the fireball, and it will show them blocking the fireball with their back to you. This is actually pretty easy to block if you know to look for it. Another thing the Dhalsim player can do is fake a teleport to the other side and instead teleport to the same side, trying to trick you into switching your block when you really should not.

Keep in mind that none of these situations are unblockable, so they are fair. It is just a good way to test your opponent's reactions and knowledge of the game. A cross-up can also mess up an opponents inputs for special moves, because those depend on where your opponent is on screen as well.

Also, I don't understand why some have posted that back as block limits your movement. In some games, holding back will only make your character block if an attack is actually hitting you. In other games, there is a specific range for moves where if you hold back while in that range you automatically block (even if the move isn't hitting you), and otherwise you are free to move back. And in many games you can also back dash to avoid blocking if you are in the block range. You'll have to give me some example situations of where you feel movement is limited by directional blocking.




With a single block button it looks like you lose some ability to make it hard for your opponent to block. That may be why MK9 has chip damage on normal moves as well as special moves so you can't just hold block for free. To be fair, though, for games with a block button, it's not impossible to make it difficult to block an attack, because there is still the requirement that some attacks must be blocked low and some must be blocked high. Crossing up still seems to be effective too, at least from my experience in MK9 so far, but to mess up special move inputs.

So, I'll leave it to someone with more experience with block button games to elaborate on what you gain when you have a single block button. A little was posted earlier in this thread, but I'd love to hear more (I'm trying to learn MK9).

[Ivo]

In some games with directional blocking, attacks that wouldn't connect still made my character "stop and block" when I simply wanted to go back. In such a game, a dedicated block button would let me invalidate a strategy of restraining my movement by attacking the air at a close distance (but far enough that it doesn't connect). I could still jump back but sometimes you don't want to jump.
I'm more of a casual gamer though so I don't remember examples of this kind of game and quite possibly they are just awful. I presume SF2 is not one of those I haven't played SF2 in aaages.

I am in a school of thought like David Sirlin in that easier to control, and less technical sequences for special moves make it a better game where the actual strategy plays a more relevant role (you are probably aware that Sirlin worked on the HD remake of SSF2 and increased the input time of the Dragon Punch among other similar changes). But that doesn't mean I support rewarding the incorrect strategy just because it is too easy...

Directional blocking can have situations where it makes it easier to block. Someone that was incorrectly stepping back may "accidentally" block an attack when in a dedicated block button they would get (rightfully) hit - which is particularly bad design IMO as the incorrect DECISION got the right result (even though it appears as good design superficially as it is easier to do it).

This is somewhat comparable with cross-ups where the defending player may get hit from using the wrong direction blocking. If it was a dedicated block button they would be able to block it (although at least here they had the correct decision in each case, just the wrong implementation). I think being able to block reliably is a good design decision and you can move the skill required to the timing of the block and strategy instead of the technical aspect of towards which direction to push the stick.

Sirlin doesn't like MK9 so maybe he thinks a dedicated block button actually makes it harder to control, but I personally think the dedicated block button is better design.

Ivo.

Other moves will cross-up or not depending on when they press the attack button while in the air. This is called an ambiguous cross-up, and is preferable, but not all characters have a move that will do this.

(...)

Another example of a cross-up is with Dhalsim in Street Figher 4 by using his fireballs and teleport together. You can throw out a fireball and then right before it connects you teleport to the other side, crossing up your opponent so the fireball hits. This means they actually have to block in the direction of the fireball, and it will show them blocking the fireball with their back to you. This is actually pretty easy to block if you know to look for it. Another thing the Dhalsim player can do is fake a teleport to the other side and instead teleport to the same side, trying to trick you into switching your block when you really should not.

[zxqdms]

In some games with directional blocking, attacks that wouldn't connect still made my character "stop and block" when I simply wanted to go back. In such a game, a dedicated block button would let me invalidate a strategy of restraining my movement by attacking the air at a close distance (but far enough that it doesn't connect). I could still jump back but sometimes you don't want to jump.
I'm more of a casual gamer though so I don't remember examples of this kind of game and quite possibly they are just awful. I presume SF2 is not one of those I haven't played SF2 in aaages.

I'm not sure how it works in SF2, but I know that in SF4 you can be put into blocking state by a whiffed attack (I think the term is proximity blocking) and in MvC3, you can't. In most situations, I think that walking back is actually the wrong choice strategically when someone whiffs a move in front of you. Instead, you are supposed to punish their whiffed attack during its recovery. I'm that that good at actually doing that, because it takes pretty good reactions.

I am in a school of thought like David Sirlin in that easier to control, and less technical sequences for special moves make it a better game where the actual strategy plays a more relevant role (you are probably aware that Sirlin worked on the HD remake of SSF2 and increased the input time of the Dragon Punch among other similar changes). But that doesn't mean I support rewarding the incorrect strategy just because it is too easy...

I mostly agree with you here. I think it's important for execution to matter in fighting games (coming from someone with not so great execution), but strategy is definitely the most important thing. If I recall what I've read from Sirlin, I think he mostly agrees with that.

Directional blocking can have situations where it makes it easier to block. Someone that was incorrectly stepping back may "accidentally" block an attack when in a dedicated block button they would get (rightfully) hit - which is particularly bad design IMO as the incorrect DECISION got the right result (even though it appears as good design superficially as it is easier to do it).

I would say that if someone is pressing back incorrectly, then they are already being punished by getting backed up into the corner. It's actually incorrect for the other player to try to attack an opponent who is backing up. They should just wait until they are in the corner. In high level play, of course, this doesn't happen because players are constantly backing up and moving forward to get into the best range for their moves and just outside of the range of the opponent's moves so they can punish a whiffed attack.

You could think of it like this:

walking back (blocking) beats an attack
an attack beats walking forward
walking forward beats walking back

In high level play, the walking back part would be a combination of walking back and fishing for whiffed moves to punish.

This is somewhat comparable with cross-ups where the defending player may get hit from using the wrong direction blocking. If it was a dedicated block button they would be able to block it (although at least here they had the correct decision in each case, just the wrong implementation).

I disagree here, if they blocked in the wrong way, then they made the incorrect decision. Also, as I said above, I still think implementation is an important part of fighting games. If you're in the situation where you're getting crossed up then that means you probably made bad strategy decisions earlier, so you're getting punished for it. It is possible to block correctly, so you still have a chance to get out of it.

For example, if you don't want to get crossed up on wake-up, don't get knocked down. If you don't want to get crossed up by a fireball/teleport, then jump over the fireball instead of blocking it. For the Dhalsim ultra, you can usually just run away unless you're in the corner, but that means you made bad choices earlier to end up in the corner. For the MvC example, that means that one of your character's died, so the opponent is rewarded with a mix-up opportunity as your new fighter joins the match.

I think being able to block reliably is a good design decision and you can move the skill required to the timing of the block and strategy instead of the technical aspect of towards which direction to push the stick.

It may be more difficult, but it's totally doable to block correctly in most cross-up situations. I know I'm repeating myself again, but I don't want execution to not matter at all, otherwise it's turning the game into turn based games. Not that turn-based games are bad, but that's not what fighting games are.

Sirlin doesn't like MK9 so maybe he thinks a dedicated block button actually makes it harder to control, but I personally think the dedicated block button is better design.

At this point, I don't think either one is better. I'm interested in figuring out how they affect the way the matches play out at high levels of play.

Thanks for responding to my post with some interesting comments.

Edit: An interesting thing I read from somewhere about execution: execution is not just about doing fancy special moves and combos, but always being able perform the correct counter at a moment's notice during a match. This would include things like blocking cross-ups correctly, and punishing whiffed moves on reaction.

[Ivo]

It may be more difficult, but it's totally doable to block correctly in most cross-up situations. I know I'm repeating myself again, but I don't want execution to not matter at all, otherwise it's turning the game into turn based games. Not that turn-based games are bad, but that's not what fighting games are.

(...)

Edit: An interesting thing I read from somewhere about execution: execution is not just about doing fancy special moves and combos, but always being able perform the correct counter at a moment's notice during a match. This would include things like blocking cross-ups correctly, and punishing whiffed moves on reaction.

You have valid points and know much more about fighting games than I do, but I want to correct something where I think you are wrong...
Even with execution extremely downplayed, it is never fair to compare to a turn-based game. Different skillset in making decisions under considerable time pressure (not to mention that most turn-based games are not even "simultaneous decision", which removes the guessing part out of the skillset as well). At best the comparison would be with a real time strategy game, where there is also the question of execution (Sirlin also comments on Starcraft and number of mouse "clicks" and such).

I'm looking like quite the Sirlin fanboy, I'm sure, but I think I should point out he has a turn-based card game published, called Yomi - simultaneous selection of "moves" and it does completely remove the execution cost as you just need to choose the card to play. It therefore focuses on the guessing and strategy parts apparently is a very, very good game and experienced reviewers seem to think despite the turn-based nature it still really feels like a fighting game.

Ivo.