thanx for the explanation HDtran...

this thread cannot die.............

HDTran your the man,thanks for everything you said on this thread ;)

i have tried miserable to explain that to a friend who is exited to buy the game,i will too but i told him similar thing you said here and he still doesnt get a clue,i told him to try Tekken for a change and he didnt like it,didnt even tried the things i told him,i think the true is its just to complicated for him and perhaps for the many who dont understand or want to understand that fighting games have evolved and MK only evolution is eye candy mainly :(

anyways i have question for you my friend,something that has been troubling me since i heard of this Combo Breaker.....:

for example lets say me and you are playing online,and lets asumme your energy bar is around 5% and almost gone and i have lots still say 80% what to keep me from just waiting for you to hit any button while i just wait ti click the Combo Breaker button........you understand what i am saying........i mean how exactly and where does the combo start,is it only after a launcher or will any puch or kick have the same effect that you will get comboed breaked.

well i hope that made sense,to give you an example,in Tekken 4 Heihachis reversals works about the same right but he suffers like 40% damage in the process while only doing 30% or something like that,but in MK: D its seems cheesy,hope that made it clear what i am trying to say.....

what do you think?


didnt know Midway thru out a fellow MK fan for pointing the flaws to the MK Team,Midway should hire someone from NAMCO and Sega(for gameplay)Tecmo(for grapghics and fluidity) ;)

thanks for the thread HDTran

Deneb, you're very welcome. I know you probably knew all of that already Immortal. =P
RRem, the combo breaker right now is pretty much a bandaid mechanic to break up the monotany of the fighting system. Right now there is a hard limit of 3 combo breakers per battle, being performed by forward + block, breaking out of anything. Ground chains, juggles, throws (in the throw situation, you still incur the damage even though the entire throw animation doesn't go through), etc. They are represented by lightning bolts right under the health bars. They also do no damage.

However, supposedly when Midway announced it, they wanted to fix breakers from working from being juggled.

Right now I'm not entirely sure what type of leverage they will give. Assuming they work IN ONLY the way they are described, I see no real use for them. You don't get any payout for playing a better defense and since everyone wants to break out 3 combos per match, its just three less of your biggest combos on both sides. So the question with the current system is if you're gonna break 3 combos or if you're gonna break 3 combos. Generally when you have a system where there is a limit, you'd want it to be used in many ways. For example, 2d fighters that implement counter type systems generally make you sacrifice a stock, but you could have just as easily used it for offense. The system that I think the breakers are closest to is the Burst system in Guilty Gear, which they should have implemented something like Offensive burst (where you can gain stock bar instead of breaking out of a combo).

In MKD's case, I would have liked using lightning bolts to do other things such as MKDA's stuff like shoving, healing, and neijin.

However, they might be able to be used to Deathtrap, so it might be a really powerful weapon. Who knows.

Regardless, it'll allow the weaker characters to mess up 3 times and not get destroyed. Of course it also lets the better characters mess up 3 times and still be in the lead... so it's a double-edged sword.

Damn, there are some great ideas in this thread

fucked that post up 0_o

I dont want this thread to be forgotten in all the melee....

Tag, damn it!

Awesome post Tran. I can only hope they will improve the fighting system for the next mk...fluff is annoying . I like your idea regarding the lightning bolts...breakers just don't offer much in their current form. I do think it's a small step in the right direction, but they need to either add more variety to them or just change the engine so that the breakers in their current form could have more significance in a match. I would prefer a whole new engine , but we'll just have to wait for that it seems.

Just remembered the day I played VF4 for the first time, and did the Practice Trial modes for like, 6 hours. I remembered a certain technique the game explained that determined which move takes priority over the other if both hit at the same time, and have no special priorities.

This would have been good to have in MKD, seeing as most times, several moves hit at the same time in almost every situation, as movement speed and options are very limited, and hitboxes are whacked out. For example, a lot of people who use characters with "Surprise maneuvers" (Sub-Zero's Cold Shoulder, Nightwolf's Shoulder Ram, Scorpion's Flip Kick, etc.) tend to buffer them right after the announcer says "Fight", so as to let the move come out once the match begins, getting a quick surprise hit on the opponent.

That's fine, but let's say you had the same character, and did the same move. Both of you will touch each other, and both of you will stay in place for about a noticable half second, and you both suddenly fly back, taking counter damage. Even if you were another character, and tried to punish with a low punch (Low attacks usually take priority over charge attacks in fighters, though not in MKD). Both attacks will still hit their mark. You will pause at the final frame of the attack for that half second, and you will fly back, and the opponent will do this animation as if you were low punching him, even though you are on the ground. Both of you will take counter damage. The whole thing looks stupid and sloppy.

Most of it is because the hitboxes are messed up. For me to explain the VF technique I mentioned earlier, I will have to address the issue of hitboxes first. From what I've observed, it seems that MKD's hitboxes are not properly mapped to some attack animations, and they have a noticable delay.

The other day, I was playing against someone. I was Sub-Zero, and he was Liu Kang. He was a crouch/throw whore, so he crouched a lot. At one time, he stood, and I was in Dragon, so I decided to try 1,2,b+2.
Before the first 1 could connect, he crouched (Without blocking), and stayed there. Now, because 1,2,b+2 is all high, he evaded it. But here's the thing. After the animation for b+2 reached it's end, when his arms are still stretched out, Liu Kang stands up, and he automatically flew, as if b+2 had hit on the point of impact. But it didn't. This was after the impact point of the animation. Also, Sub-Zero's arms were not touching Liu Kang,s body. There was a small, but noticable space between his hands and Liu Kang's body that determined that in theory, that attack should have been a miss.

This delay and hitbox detection issue is one of the reasons why the characters sometimes hit when they are not supposed to, or when a character should have blocked something but did not, and is also why the 'being hit' animation for some of the characters play out a half second after two attacks hit at the same time. It is also the reason that when you hit an opponent after sidestepping their attacks, which have completed, it's still considered a counter hit, even though a counter hit should only be activated if you hit the opponent any time during which their attack animation is playing. If you notice, there are several instances when a character has completely finished the attack animation, but when hit, is still considered a counter hit, because of the delay. There should have been a more cleaned up form of hit detection, animation cancelling, and hit timing.

Anyway, back to the main point. What I learned from VF4's Practice Trials was that if two moves with no special properties hit each other at the same time, the attack that takes the higher damage should take precedence over the other attack, therefore seamlessly cancelling the weaker attack's animation into the 'being hit' animation. It is counted as a counter hit against the weaker attack.

This would have been a nice system addition to MKD's engine. It could have made the matches look less sporadic and the counter system maybe would have worked better.

Just remembered this and felt the need to share. No use anymore though, since the game is already out. *shrugs*

By the way, here's a SC2 match video that shows 'good hitbox usage' (Can't think of any other way to say it). Anyway, some parts go in slow mo, and you can see the little things, like someone missing the other person's strike by like, just an inch.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is collisions. Many times, especially against the CPU, I can be visibly blocking an attack, and it will still hit. Or my character will be far away enough from another fighter to where there is a small amount of space there (maybe 10-20 pixels), and they'll still take a hit from a punch or kick that did not even touch. This problem occured on both MKDA and MKD.

Also: I don't know why people always say Soul Calibur II is such a deep fighter. Many of the things you mentioned for MKDA/D are also a factor in that game.

Very good thread that requires a bump.

But.

I really don't think MK will ever be the fighter that you want it to be for the simple reason that it sells as is.

I used to lament about how shitty music and movies were so popular while good stuff was unheard of or forgotten about. But it all comes down to LCD - Lowest Common Denominator.

The general populace doesn't care about frame advantage, they care about fatalities, secrets and nifty(but useless) moves. I doubt the MK team will put in the effort needed to make MK compete with games like Tekken or Virtua Fighter because they simply don't have to.

As for myself, I like MK and I'm pretty good at it. I also don't have the time(nor desire) to spend months learning a single character and I'm sure alot of other people are in the same boat. They just want to play and have fun - remember these are GAMES.

So while I appreciate your post, I think you are wasting your time here. You should be studying some C# and thinking about making the next great fighting game.

Just put some cool fatalties in it!

Gameplay wise, mkda needs a better defensive system.
And those of you who say mkd is the same mkda, gameplay wise, well in that case so does mkd.
I havent got mkd. so i wouldnt know
i have a few ideas on improving defense and creating more diversity amongst characters.
While they dont go in depth into stuff like frame properities, its something i believe ed boon and co can work with at least.
Expecting them to change the engine over night is impossible....however my ideas can be implemented and added for the next mk as a beginning step. I Hope Ed boon takes some time to read this.
im writing my ideas out at the moment and once complete, i will post them here.

No, not really. SC2 is in the green zone, for all the issues I mentioned above. I have not ever seen a scenario like this in SC2:

I'm playing against someone. The opponent gets close and attempts a throw. I crouch, but release the down button after I have seen the 'impact animation' of the throw end, thinking that I should not be thrown, But I still get thrown, because the arms of the opponent were still out, even though the impact animation was over.

So no, the issues I addressed are pretty much nonexistant in SC2. That is why I used it for the comparison.

Look at this MKD combo video, which I got from Konqrr's website. ( )
You can easily see that several of the strikes of those combos are not supposed to hit, yet they are.

http://konqrr.com/vids/Combos/MKD_Combo_SubZero_54.wmv

Which is why it is so unfortunate and frustrating to a lot of people. It's wasted potential. *shrugs*

I don't think there's much harm in trying. If we can somehow convince these lowest common denominator fans that MK would kick ass with better gameplay, then perhaps they'll ask for it. I had VF4 Evo for almost a year, playing it rarely. Once I got into it though, I was playing it a lot more before it got scratched up. If MK can duplicate the gameplay fun factor VF4E had on me, then it would almost never leave my PS2.

The problem is that the lowest common denominator isn't easy to get through to. I've seen many situations here when it was like talking to a wall. Some people, lots of people unfortunately, just don't get it. You say "better gameplay" to them and they say that the fatalities are cool. In order to explain something like better gameplay to someone you need the other party to have some semblance of an idea of what gameplay even is.

You know what? This HAS to be the most valueable thread IN this forum right now, no exaggeration...

I have some more ideas I want to put out there...

I dont think the weapon pulls should be done by a button press, they should be motions like they were in Mortal Kombat 4.

They need throw escapes, air control to stop the juggles, a real counter/parrying system.

This game is so broken, its not even funny, and i see it when I play online too...

This game is less than a month old and I'm disgusted by what's already been found. It's becoming a chore for me to even go online to play a few rounds since I feel like I'm doing it out of necessity to get some more play outta this thing and not for fun. Do you know what it means to have an ONLINE capable fighting game get old and boring faster than the one player modes on Soul Calibur II and Tekken 4 and virtually every other fighting game released within the last four or five years? This is what Boon and Co. need to face. It's what they should have faced at Fight Night. They say infinites will always be found in fighting games? Sure but the MVC2 infinites aren't piss easy to do and certainly weren't found within two weeks of release. I'm sick of hearing excuses for their design issues. I was one of the most optimistic people here a while back for what the MK team could do but not anymore. It's just sickening when I think back to how we begged and pleaded for something to be done and then we jumped around all giddy when we hear about counter hits and combo breakers which don't even work right. It's all BS. It's like we were toddlers asking for a freaking cookie and got handed a saltine cracker but were happy anyway since we got something instead of nothing. I'm jealous of other fighting game communities. They get to have real conversations. We have to beg for things that are staples everywhere else and when we get them they don't work right. If MK7 is not significantly better then I'm done with MK. They get one more chance from me and I consider that being stupidly generous. I've stuck around since day one and dealt with being jerked around. Forget it. I can't be wasting my time and money on something that isn't going to grow up with the rest of the industry. Sorry for the rant. What Colguile and Menthol have harshly said in the past about MK has finally hit me hard. They're right. They've always been right. MK is always going to be chasing the bus in a golf cart instead of actually riding it with every other fighting game.

This is the truth, the awful truth, whether we like it or not.. MK has got to catch up with the other fighting games.....

This news of a new MK every year just does not bode well for the series or for the fans..... A new MK in 2006? That means they are not going to change....

The rant was needed.

I felt that post from shoryuken.com tony.

lol

Up this thread..........

I'm starting to feel the same way...

But the sad thing is, when the MK Team sees how good their games are selling and reads reviews from video game mags that are kissing Ed Boon's ass, they think they're doing a good job. They don't work harder because they think they need to...

I know that if MK had a good fighting engine, it would own the fighting game market. It is already so popular, and it has something other fighting games don't, a hell of a story and fantastic character development. But the biggest thing it is missing is also the most important thing, gameplay.

The fighting engine sucks total ass and the thing that angers me the most is that there have been tons of incredible ideas on this site, but the MK Team hasn't implemented any. The MK series has the potential to be the greatest fighting game of all time, but the MK Team just doesn't seem realize it...

I think that if the MK Team doesn't do the series justice, the whole MK franchise should be given to another company...

I mentioned that awhile back myself. I wanted Sega.