Bigger roster. not a huge fan of variations, as the master of fist said 'a true warrior enters the arena with all his powers a the ready. '

I was also thinking that if variations come back,they should be limited to 2:
One that focuses more on offense,and less on defense and vice versa.
That way,it's a bit easier to balance.

Honestly Id rather have a bigger roster. A lot of the variations barely add anything to the character or they buff one variation.

I dunno, the game is still young so I haven't completely made up my mind yet, but I'm starting to feel like the variation system is a bit of a gimmick. I have yet to see people really even use them for their intended purpose, like a character's strongest variation will always get picked over their other two. An example is Sub Zero, there is no reason to ever not play Grand Master, you are at a severe disadvantage not playing in it. Like I don't think much thought was put into the variations actually serving a purpose over just playing different for the sake of playing different. Another example could be Goro, Goro's weakness is getting in, he can be zoned out easily. So you pick Goro's zoning variation Tygrar with its fireball specials. Only problem is his low fireball doesn't hit full screen and his high fireball is easily crouched, not to mention both moves come out extremely slow and will get beaten out by all other projectiles. So he's still fucked by the same weakness.

Or there are characters like Shinnok and Reptile who got completely shafted. Reptile gets three different traits and Shinnok feels incomplete in ALL his variations. Like if they had one or two things from one variation added to another he would feel fine, but due to the variation system everything he has gets spread out and he just feels unfinished all around.

Like I said tho the game is young and its too early to really tell. All ready while typing this I can think of some characters that might poke holes in my complaint/theory.

Bigger roster... definitely

Bigger roster. I don't care for the variations to be honest

Bigger roster and alts. Variations are a waste to me. Limits your characters too much which is probably the opposite intention. It was a cool idea, but I do not want to have my moves restricted to only certain variations. Seems unnecessary.

To me it feels like NRS started out with the variation idea with certain characters,but as time went on they started running out of time and just shoe horned in variations. ( reptile im looking at you )

While some characters like Scorpion and Kenshi and Quan Chi really benefit and feel different, the majority of the roster dont seem as different.

My vote goes to a bigger roster next time with either two variations, or give players they ability to switch variations mid match, perhaps at the cost of meter.

Bigger roster.

VARIATIONS!!! What the fetch people? i thought adding variations made my experience 10x better! i loved it!

Definitely bigger roster. I miss some of the older characters having access to ALL of their moves and while some of them are cool (dat traveling fan lift doe) I'd rather they had access to everything.

Also considering that a lot of the variations seem tacked on, either give them one less or just do away with them.

I'll talk a bit about this since I'm torn between these two things, although for people that want an easy answer, I would rather have a bigger roster.

Here is why.

The variation idea sounded really great, key word "sounded". Once you actually get to play the game and try the variations, you see how different they are from what you thought.

It's something you need to try to know how... "unless" it is.

As a user above me pointed out, some characters are really different and benefit from each variation in a really unique way but others like Kung Lao and Reptile don't benefit and you only stick to one variation out of the three.

Buzzsaw Kung Lao is what I, everybody and their mother play, the two other variations just feel pretty useless because they don't add much and instead they take away from Kung Lao. His only real Mix-up is B+2,DB+2 And B+2,2. which can only be done in that variation so it's what everybody is going to pick.

Reptile just feels dumb, he only gains one thing in each variation and it honestly just feel like they ran out of ideas when they got around to doing Reptile. It's weird because you'd think Reptile would be the easiest to do when it comes to variations.

But! There is also another side to the argument.

Kenshi doesn't have ANY common specials, with each variation he becomes a different character when it comes to specials which makes you want to switch between the variations.

Quan Chi also benefits from each variation and doesn't feel like he is missing something.

Shinnok is also a really good example.

I personally feel like this variation idea is good and I'm lucky that my two favorite characters were done right when it comes to the variations because that made me see their potential.

So for a different answer other than Variations or roster, I'll give a different one.

I would like to see variations back and done right but I don't believe NRS will be able to do it so my pick goes for bigger roster but that won't happen. They planned on 24-25 initial roster and variations didn't change anything.

I would have preferred a bigger roster. I don't like having that extra step when I pick a character--I like to know what I'm getting as soon as I make my character choice. And it just doesn't feel right that MKX has a smaller roster than its predecessor--and this will probably still be true even after all the DLC is revealed.

Yes. Variations is the best thing about this game. I much rather have variations over more characters and hope they go this route for MKXI as well

This is my answer as well.

Great idea, but it's not as efficiently executed as it could be. If they tried again it would probably be the same thing, even if they were to reduce the variations down to two from three. So, I think overall it would be best to simply increase the roster size.

Variations suck! Give all the moves from all the 3 variations to one player and add more fighters to the roster. The variations just contain mostly special move's that can be implemented in ONE variation and don't bother. It was plain that this shit is a gimmick. You just realized now because you played the game. It was very clear even a year before.

A mix: cut the variations to 2 per character and expand the roster.

I like the variation idea, but I think it would have worked better with 2, since almost every character in MKX has 2 interesting variations and one that just felt tacked on to fill the quota IMO.

For the most part, I don't think the variations are needed. I just hope that if they decide to no longer do variations, that Ninjutsu Scorpion kind of becomes his main self in future games.

That variation of him is my absolute favorite and I almost feel weird playing another variation of him now lol

Anyway, yeah some are better than others. Scorpions are all pretty different imo, but then you have Reptile who really doesn't get anything besides traits that don't last, or Hollywood Cassie which iirc only adds air shot.

I would be cool with them coming back in MK11, but maybe give each character 2 variations instead of 3 this time.

Or just scrap the variations all together, idc as long as Ninjutsu Scorpion stays

Bigger roster. I think Variations are going to go the way of tag and Hara Kiri's. They were a fun experiment but won't remain a staple feature.

And I am happier with it that way. It's because of these things that characters got bullshitted under the rug (Jade,Noob Saibot, Sector) because they just had to give their gameplay to other characters simply because they couldn't think of anything else to give them.

There was no reason at all Jade or Noob Saibot couldn't be in this game seeing how we already have a roster with three dead characters masquerading as if they are living. Mournful variation my ass.

(Stupid, just...why? Why not design them around being hellspawn versions of themselves?)

I think they should have realized that some characters are only really worth, at max, 2 variations. (Looking at you, reptile). Seriously did they think anybody would be using the invisible variation?! (unless he has some other cool strings in there, I haven't even touched it).

I love variations, I get that often one is stronger than the others, but there are a lot of differences.

Some people love cryomancer sub instead of grand master sub.

Some people like assassin kitana a lot better than royal storm.

All of those clearly have very different traits, strengths, weaknesses, etc.

Another good example is Scorpion. Although Inferno (or whatever one he pulls the minions out) is often seen as much better, sometimes Ninjutsu's reach can be more useful.

If they had a bigger roster, it certainly would not be 3x as big. Probably not even 2x as big. For that reason, I prefer variations.

I also don't see how they would incorporate that many more characters into the story and have it decent.

I definitely think it is possible for them to pull of the variation system much better. That is not to say I think they will. There are always time constraints. I think they would have to be much more malleable with the variation system. Some characters have no variations if they cannot come up with good ones, and others could have 3, maybe even more depending on what they can do with the character and how different they can make them feel.

Whoever said something along the lines of "It feels like they just shoehorned some variations in there" I totally agree with, and I think if they made the system more malleable then we wouldn't get that. For some reason I get the feeling this would make it harder to balance the characters, but I don't know shit about working in that field.

I love the variation idea, but there's clearly more attention paid to some characters than others. I'd say there's three tiers of variations:

Tier 1 - Characters who play essentially as three entirely different people.
Tier 2 - Characters with three solid variations but similar basic play in each
Tier 3 - Characters with lazy, lazy variations

Tier 1 for me is Kenshi, Takeda, Erron Black, etc.

Tier 2 is Mileena, Kitana, Scorpion, etc.

Tier 3 is the Reptile types. There's just nothing going on there. A lot of characters have one Reptile-class variation, where it feels like they ran out of ideas after two. Poor Reptile has three of them.

If everybody had variations as different as Kenshi and Takeda -- or even as Kitana and Scorpion -- I think it'd be a really wonderful mechanic. I'm all for them refining it as they go and continuing to use it.

It's tough to say.

I do love Variations. I love having choices on how to play characters. It's great to play a character that I wouldn't normally play, because they have a fun Variation.

However, the way they are used differs from the original intent of counter picking variations. People will really just stick to one variation and never touch the other two. And some variations add little to nothing for the playstyle it is going for.

But I feel like saying "Bigger roster" is saying quantity over quality. Instead of trying to fix the variation system and make it better, people just want more characters. I personally don't think that is a good solution. I want each character to be as fleshed out as possible in terms of gameplay. And variations leverage more out of what characters can do.

I say cut the variations down to just 2, and really put moves in those variations that emphasize the playstyle.

I'd rather have both!

Bigger Roster