good thread man. well i will give attention to reptile since you mentioned him, but first: remember hsmoke speed! if they took his speed and give it to scorpion it will believe it or not increase his tier level. Sheeva for another example is the character who recovers very fast from all attacks that hits her but it not helps her much. Recovery speed is useful for example after sindel's air fireball and etc. but anyway, into Reptile:

His force is the forceballs, and they have limit of 3 hits before to be released, except if you gc it. Now his Launcher has a little more recovery time (i have no idea why mid team decided to do that) so he cant relaunch but can release a forceball. The launcher is 3 hits, just excact as you need for the forceball, if he had a Knee Launcher -> that would be two hits, another two forceball would be possible, or even jk in some situations. It will be possible even to relaunch with him. Two forceballs play huge role in near the corner scenarios by the way!

Imagine that you are in corner against Kabal for example, after ducked fireball run HK, LP, Dash (now you are against the corner) aaHP, Forceball, and at last 9 HPs then aaLp aaHP and then Uppercut, its over 66%.

Now as for balanced stuff. Its good that all Reptile's combos are deserved, i mean if you do 3 dash hp punches after popup, then uppercut you deserve 50%+, but if you explore him a little more, you will find that Reptile is broken too. He can turn the entire round just if one forceball hits. The fact that he has 3 infinites puts him just next to Kano in tier list. its somehow:

1. Kabal; 2. Hsmoke; 3. Lao; 4. Kano/Reptile

My opinion is that Reptile will loose his tier place without a launcher, but if he had a knee launcher he will be very more deadly.

I think Reptile deserves most of what he has. I think the dash is a little broken and think it should be disabled after a certain number of hits. Just because its an infinite and I think they should be removed completely.

I think another crucial characteristic not mentioned is the air throw. I don't have time for a lengthy post at the moment but the air throw is definately a key element for characters like Jax.

Ok. Well, first off a comment on how the game is balanced. I love UMK3T because they balance the moves not the combos. There's nothing that says after so many hits Reptile can't hit his opponent any more, but there is something that says after so many hits his force ball is disabled. The only problem is they didn't apply that rule enough. It seems like it should have been common sense to put caps on some things even if they didn't think of any way the caps could ever be tested.

That aside, I think its interesting to see what goes in to making or breaking a character and I think this thread should turn out awesome.

Busta mentioned a bunch of the key things that set apart certain characters but there are so many make or break things.

Air throw: A truly dominating move for both enhancing combos and punishing cross ups, or wreckless jumping in general. I've personally always felt Sheeva should have an air throw and a high priority grab move on the ground. She suffered from being a big target, and having the air throw could have added a lot of value to her. I think the air throw is what keeps Robo Smoke playable, since in the air is a place where the easy hit box people could stand to really suffer. Same goes for Jax. The air throw takes the character that I most enjoy using as a dummy to try combos on and makes him a real threat in air.

Hit Boxes: wow there are some weird ones. The robo ninjas suffer because of them. The female ninjas benefit from them.

Regulars: Different characters have different quality regular moves. Robo Ninja uppercuts are not good. Kung Lao and Liu Kang's roundhouses are very fun. But these basics are less tweakable compared to a lot of the other characteristics that go into making a character good so I think they'll stick no matter what.

Startup and Recovery Times: I think the category is pretty important. Ermac's TK slam, Jade's dash kick, the spear, Jax's dash, Nightwolf's charge, Kano's ball, Reptile's dash, all come out very quickly. This isn't a make or break category because Ermac's green ball is slow but he is just deadly even without it. Kung Lao's hat is slow, but he is deadly without it. Stryker's gun added a ton of value because it sets up combos and is very quick. I think this plays into determining a character's overall quality as well.

I think a discussion of the balancing of characters though should look at how to make the perfect MK game. How do we raise the bottom tier and even out the top tier?

Bottom:
Sheeva - air throw and decreased recovery time from the fireball could make her pretty damned deadly I think.
Shang - Imagine if you could control when you morphed back? Maybe have a max time limit but also have it so doing the morph again brought you back? Also, speed up the morphs. Then, setup disabling for his fireballs and prepare some special DP rules for when he is morphed. Could be pretty fun.

Top:
Kabal - Damage protection off the spin. I used to think startup time on the spin would be cool but I'm starting to think that would go beyond balancing and ruin him. Disable the purple ball. Not sure when. Perhaps limit it to 2 purple balls per combo or something along those lines?

Human Smoke - How do you balance him without making him not fun? That's tough. I wouldn't want to take away anything he has because he is just a really enjoyable player to play as and I wouldn't want this to turn out like MSHvSF. Perhaps do a very fine tweak to his whole character like decrease the damage his normals do very slightly, just enough to effect the damage he can do off combos.

Its nearly endless what balancing tweaks could be imagined. All we can hope at this point is there's a chance to actually create our own version of MK that lets us tweak them.

Here's to hoping...

Sheeva with an air throw sounds awesome; it must be done. Good ideas.

Most of what I would say has already been covered, and with the two current MK revival projects going on that I know of and have some kind of input in, we might just see these improvements.

For Kabal, balancing him by adding recharge time to the purple ball, but no limiting, perhaps just enough time to get a triple JK afb in the corner, somewhere around Stryker's riot gun, or a double at least because the last one generally needs to be done immediately. Damage protection off the spin is good too because that means aa spins result in an average of 21% (imagine Kabal only being able to uppercut after a spin) instead of an easy 42%, and it would slightly decrease his autocombo as well since the special DP would make the JKS and the first hit of the combo do half damage.

Human Smoke should just have new, balanced moves entirely.

Noob Saibot, the disabler should be the same speed as Sub's freeze with as much recovery as Ermac's green ball.

Sheeva needs another move, an air throw would be good, perhaps she would grab and slam straight down and land on you or something. Konqrr and I developed a new "sumo stomp" move for her in Mugen. You can see it here:

http://www.darktemplarz.com/tempmatt/sheevastomp.wmv

Remember the game is woefully incomplete at this point and extremely preliminary. Obvious adjustments like speed, reaction, etc, will be made.

I think Kabal,s Spin should get a recharge time like Kitana,s Fan in MK2.
And maybe change the input commando to something longer like b,b,b hp or something like that.

Now, I'm not a high level player like you guys (I’m more of an intermediate), but since you're talking about upgrading MKT, I want to share something that bugs me:

Scorpion is pretty much useless because of Smoke. I never even want to use Scorpion, because Smoke is so good. This isn't the same as just picking a superior character with a different style; he's the same character upgraded to the max. I feel weak using Scorpion in comparison.

What if Scorpion was given the launcher combo/s that Smoke has and Smoke was designed with completely new moves based around his character?

That's what I'm thinking:

Give Scorpion Smoke's HK, D+LP, D+HP combo and/or LK/HK, LP. Scorpion becomes "Smoke" in effect, reclaiming moves that are his by rights.


I was thinking of new moves that would identify Smoke as "Smoke" and not a Scorpion-move clone.

Smoke could use Ermac's Teleslam arm motion sprites to raise a barrage of smoke up at around a character's height. This could be jumped over though. The effects for it would be a capture of the character, twitching in the cloud for a free hit. It would be disabled at a point in a juggle so that you couldn't re-trap the opponent. You would just be allowed one trap like Smoke's spear currently has. Maybe there could be different ranges of this move.

He could also have the Slide as he is Lin Kuei and any other smoke related moves, along with the possibility of invisibility, of course.

Anyway, I’m not good at coming up with ideas, as I'm sure you serious players can thing of better working move sets using your intimate knowledge of the game, but at the very least; Smoke would benefit from being his own character move-wise rather than just a replacement for Scorpion.


Just a thought. This MK project is considering new moves rather than just fine tweaking, right? Many characters are in major need of an overhaul.

I feel the same way about Sektor, even though it's not QUITE as bad. Sektor has his homing missiles going for him, although they can be snuffed out during some frames (which should be fixed). Meanwhile Robot Smoke has a spear, which is far more usful then a regular missile... he gets the same teleport uppercut, he gets an AIR throw, and he gets invisibility.

The other thing Sektor has is a launcher combo, but his juggle options are not very exciting. They may as well allow more hits before the Teleport Uppercut is locked... at least it would allow him to have some more fun with that launcher combo. Oh and in MKT he gets a double missile. But the fact remains that whenever Random Select gives me Sektor, I always think "I'd rather be using Robot Smoke." Do you think they should both be allowed to use the Teleport Uppercut? I always hate when such a distinct move gets handed out to multiple characters. I feel like Smoke should lose it and get something else in return. At least his spear is drawn differently, but the Teleport is a total ripoff.

Man what is it with SMOKE biting off people's moves?

Yeah all of this is going to be taken into consideration, I think perhaps Scorpion's teleport punch will no activate damage protection, and Robot Smoke's teleport uppercut will, or something like that. We'll mess around with things here and there and figure out what is the best. Damage, priority, speed, move sets, combos, stuff like that, and once the game is readily playable I'll get information together on how to make sure you can actually use Mugen on your computer. DreemerNJ has a project as well which might come to fruition before the mugen project even though the mugen one is a lot further along at the moment.

lol, if I ever find time to work on it again

On a side note, Sektor seems hurt mainly by his juggling to me. I think adding DP to smoke's teleport uppercut is a good start. And, perhaps, change the properties of the missile a bit, maybe make it knock the opponent towards Sektor creating a way to extend his juggling a bit, and set up the disabling as necessary to keep that from being overly abused.

If his midscreen juggle is lengthened enough a pre-fired homing missile could cap it off, which would definately help him out.

Also, I'm not sure what to do with his homing missile really. I actually kind of like that you can snuff it with d+lk, but maybe only allow d+lk to snuff it? Just a thought.