might be playing a dangerous game with KZread for not censoring the KBs but I got away with it once so (:<

"It could've been down with stance change" now hold up buddy, you know they couldn't have done that, they have to keep that button useless, giving it a useful function would defeat its purpose of wasting a button mapping.

Fighting Game Garbage: WHY TF DID STANCE CHANGE HAVE TO TAKE UP A BUTTON WHEN IT DOES EXACTLY NOTHING

Positivity very is important, but it is always good to look at things that are flawed to see what could be improved, and it’s also fun to see things that just… don’t work or don’t work well. Do whatever you feel like man, I’m enjoying all of it.

I think this speaks also to a problem with the variations system as a whole, where all characters are kinda chopped up piecemeal and you have to choos between options that were previously core to their kits in older games, along with significantly changing how a characters power can be budgeted.

I think my least favorite part of breakaway is the animation, your best dead fish impersonation should not be an acceptable combo breaker.

This video is like Christmas!

I'm glad you brought up the inconsistencies in the armor breaker moves because even me, someone who only passively followed MK11, instantly knew that not having everyone have an armor breaker in their base moves was gonna be a bad idea and make the whole system feel like a bandage at best

I say that Fighting Game Garbage isn't inherently negative, it's more like a deep dive behind why a mechanic doesn't work very well in a game or how a character is poorly balanced. Like I'd say that you could make a garbage branded video of 3S Ryu simply explaining why Ken is strictly better in 3S even though Ryu isn't terribly constructed.

I absolutely despise this mechanic. I love how you also mention how lame it looks. In MKX every character had their own unique breaker animations, one grounded and one in the air. Here everyone just limpdicks out of the air all the same.

Breakaway shares a thing that annoys me with most of the MK games: It just looks flaccid. Unless it's a fatality, a brutality, a super move or a crushing blow, there is just not alot of impact behind most attacks.

MK11 was so close to being such a great game. It's a shame NRS didn't really address all of the core issues the game had. Not just breakaways, but the lack of consistent antiairs (and jump kicks being way too powerful for some characters), being able to flawless block launch when you're at massive frame disadvantage, the overall inconsistency of custom moves and how much they cost (why does an S tier character like Jacqui get to have 3 of her most powerful moves in one variation while characters like Raiden have to spend two slots for complete garbage moves?), extremely powerful defensive option selects, the atrocious wakeup system (it was even more awful back in the days of wake up buttons and the three delay types so kudos to them for fixing that at least), the lack of creativity with combos and variations (and so many characters having useless custom moves in general, forcing you to go with one or two kits most of the time), fatal blows being obnoxious and sometimes being unpunishable because of the pushback, the meter system eliminating any kind of meter management, and terrible character balancing issues throughout the game's lifespan (why were Jacqui and Cetrion barely touched but characters like Sonya were nerfed into obscurity?). I think some of the issues could've never been fixed because of how central they are to the game, like the meter system, but NRS could've easily addressed so many of the other issues that the community brought up so many times. I really liked MK9 and MKX so I hope NRS learns from the mistakes of MK11 to make MK12 the best MK game to date.

big yellow:

I think SF4 is actually a great comparison to show how unevenly distributed armor breakers can work out. Some characters had great armor breakers that supplement their kit, but the characters that don't still have really good universal options against focus attacks. Sure, some characters are better at dealing with armor, but ever character can deal with it if the player has a read.

This particular vid actually reminded me of something that could make for a really good Fighting Game Gold: the Killer Instinct reboots version of Combo Breakers, and/or the Counter Breaker side of the mechanic. Pretty much one of the best executed defensive mechanics I’ve seen in any fighting game

I remember that back when I played this game, I had to equip Baraka's armor breaker into all my variations because for whatever reason NRS decided to not make his armor breaker a move he universally has in every possible variation. It was so annoying and made me had to sacrifice a different move. Or even how before customs were legal, I had to use only one tournament variation because his other two didn't have the armor breaker. I just don't understand why NRS implemented armor break the way they did.

A friend of mine who adores MK11 just couldn’t understand why I didn’t like the changes between MKX and 11. I much preferred the risk/reward decision making in X, it made sense to me that if you needed to sacrifice some resources for defence your offence should be weakened afterwards

My biggest issue with breakaway is that you can break in the middle of some characters special moves or non special cancelable strings. Mileena is a good example of this. You can break during ball roll, which defeats the whole purpose of her armor breaker in the first place because she can’t use it after her BEST LAUNCHER. F1 2 also can be broken out of and punished, and Mileena can’t do anything to stop you.

To me the fun of fighting game

using shao as an example for good breakaways is so funny for me as i remember when they added armour breakers, shoulder charge could not be enhanced when it hit armour meaning it could not armour break despite being an armour breaker. happy to see they fixed that atleast.