From the Game Informer website:

To teach people the different nuances in fighting games – like counters and reversals - Deception will feature on screen indicators to help teach players when the proper time is to block, attack, perform a counter, etc. There will be 3 indicator circles (red, blue, yellow) on the side of the screens which will tell you the strength and weaknesses of your attacks, as well as when you are the most vulnerable.

This, frankly, scares the hell out of me because it's indicating that the MK team wants to add depth to MK but is afraid to. Sure, the arguement could be made that if you don't like it don't look at it. But the issue is not that it's there. The issue is that something influenced the MK team to put it there and the influence isn't a good one. They think that players need their hand held through things that require actual timing like counters. Honestly, I blame us as fans. Somewhere along the line we made the MK team afraid of improvement. That if they add timing sensitive gameplay elements like throw reversals, parries, etc. Players will drop the controller, put their hands in the air and say, "Ah, fooey, I don't get this newage humabaloo!". We're not eighty year olds just learning how to play video games.

What I get out of this is that the team wants these standard elements in the game but would rather play it safe and make MK a fighting game with training wheels so players won't have to be bothered with "feeling out" their opponent and reacting accordingly but "Luk at teh pretty culers" and press a button when it turns red. If they're putting this in as a feature of a training mode or something then this rant of mine is meaningless so ignore it. But if this is as standard as the lifebar will be then I hope they allow it to be turned off at least. I don't want MK to be the stupid man's fighting game. We can handle a 6-10 frame throw reversal without a light flashing telling us when to do it. Don't be afraid that we won't "get it". We already "get it" and are waiting for MK to give it to us.