i hear your pain. Hey what is online play really like i haven't
went out and got live yet could you give me the scoop i'm into high
level gameplay to every frame of lag counts thanks.

i totaly agree!! REAL MK players are skilled with everyone! even if that person sucks!
and about online play...it can be a bit laggy...and its hard to find someone who will keep fighting you even if they loose...most of the high scorers jsut fight noobs...they will come into a room ive created...thinking imma a noob to MK and i stomp the shit out of them and they bail after the first fight...with a fuck you!...but most of the time when they see they cant beat you they disconnect and reload their profile from memory card...keeping their flawless winning streak!
me im the type of guy that compliments my oppenent! ill tell um hey nice shot ...or good game...but most ignore you...times sure have changed since the old arcade days... but all in all if you can get you a list of COOL people to fight you its very fun !! VERY!...get a friend over and if you score doesnt mean alot to you...just trade off rounds with your homie like back in the day...remember!!
anyways my gammer tag is Dark Carnival17 and ide be glad to play some honest players who are down to keep a battle going!!

I bought XBOX live just for MKD and for the most part im happy. At times I have problems getting a quick match going, I don't like how they rate each individual account, but other than that I don't really have any complaints. I haven't experienced to much lag time...every once in a while it will bog down on you and screw you up but for the most part its not to bad.

My Gamertag is MST3K nagel and It would be great to be able to fight a honest player that doesn't drive me insane because they use the same character every match or because they get arrogent if they kick your ass round after round. I've played some pretty bad fighters out there but at least they had some skill to them they were not finding the cheapest combo or move in the game and doing it over and over and over.
Your right Im sure a I along with lot of people miss the days of MK arcade

There's no law saying you have to be good with everyone. I personally usually pick Kabal, Baraka, or Shujinko, but that's just because they're my personal favorites. I'm not going to pick mileena just because you think I should play someone different, heh.

I agree. However, I don't think you need to be skilled with EVERYONE--that's kinda sad, actually. I have about 3-4 or so characters I'm good with in any given MK, and that's what I stick with .....unless I don't seem to care that day, then I just use the ol' random....

Your right there is no law that says you have to use every character...but it does get annoying as hell when a person uses the same ONE player every round. You have three characters you use and thats a LOT more than I can say about most. I don't use every character either the main people I play with are Raiden, Kabal, Sub-Zero, Sindel, Ermac and Ashrah. It gets very annoying when I fight the same person 10 fights in a row...Sure I could quit and start another fight but as some of us have learned that it can be a bitch to find someone who doesn't quit after the first couple arounds on XBOX live.

here is a suggestion.
shutup and play, when an opponent becomes boring, move on and play someone else. you do have that choice you know.

""me im the type of guy that compliments my oppenent! ill tell um hey nice shot ...or good game...but most ignore you...times sure have changed since the old arcade days... but all in all if you can get you a list of COOL people to fight you its very fun !! VERY!...get a friend over and if you score doesnt mean alot to you...just trade off rounds with your homie like back in the day...remember!! ""
Amen DarkCarnival.... I personally have a mic and I'll usually mute it at the begining of the match until I hear the person speak, assuming they have a mic. If they sound like someone I'd want to talk to then I'll unmute and conversate with them... If I'm totally whooping the crap out of them, I try to give them pointers and let them know what they could be doing differently. I hate shit talkers.
Last night I was muting at the begining of the match as usual and some guy was on the mic playing as Noob-Smoke and I was Kenshi (my fav). He said. "Got a mic? " No answer from me because he sounds like a moron. Then he starts talking shit to himself basically " Guess not bitch. I'm gonna F*** you up. Ect."
Damn it was fun to completely walk all over him the first round, then turn my mic on and mockinly use the same words he just said to talk shit right back at him. Thus beating his ass hard core the second round.
Oh..... that was a great fight..... lol

Yah....... im begining to hate scropion becasue i fight him so much. It was ok at first since i dont lose to scorpion players but then it just got annoying. I play as Sindel, Mileena, Ashrah, Jade, or Li Mei, And when im playing against the same person i alternate between them so it doesent get boring. I twould be ok if people played with scorpion once, then switched to another character!

same here i usualy stay pretty quiet ...but if the person is cool...or they keep falling for low attacks or throws i try to point out whut they should and shouldnt be doing...but some people think your being a smart ass!! lol
and why exactly is it SAD to be good with everyone...you must not know how to get really good at a game...once you learn everyones fighting styles, patterns and moves...you know how to defend against them...you know what move spams there moves ect...
DUHHH! i didnt say i liked everyone i played with...but its nice to know your oppnent and be good with everyone on a fighting game...thats why all the characters are there...you dont jsut find the ones who have the cheapest moves and longgest combos!!
anyways MST3K im putting you on my buddy list right now! ill be on around 11pm tonight!!
i hope your good...i need my ass kicked...thats the other way of getting good at a game ...playing some one better than you! it teaches you to learn from your own mistakes!!
but maybe im just stuck in the past! i dunnoh

Dark Carnival17 I'll put you on my buddy list when I get home from work....I should be on around 11 tonight as long as I don't go out to the bars . Iike I said before Im not the best but im not the worst...My rating doesn't look the best but thats mainly because my friends have been playing on XBOX Live more than I have...LoL. Ratings honestly don't mean shit to me i've played a guy that was 25 wins and 100 loses and lost then I've played a guy that was 200 wins 30 something loses and destroyed him. Yeah well anyway...I'll put you on my friends list when I get home.

I don't see a problem with picking the same character over and over again. I mean when you fight someone you want to test your skills. Most of the time you will pick the person you are best at. I under if a person picks someone and does a move over , over and over again, but if they fight fare and square, I don't see the problem. Myself I am waiting to fighting online, mainly because I want to be a well rounded fighter with at least 5-9 characters. When I fight and I am sure most people( not lame people that dissconnect before the match is finished) they want to have the win / loss stats true to there still level no matter what the character. I understand where you are coming from though.

I can't stand when people pick the same 1 person over and over again either.
Even when I just got MK:D and I went online- typically I'd start the fight with my best character: Kira. And if I lose/win I picked someone else- didn't really matter 'cause I sucked as equal with everyone else at that time.
I never pick the same person two rounds in a row- unless the other person does it- but even then I usually don't.
I don't have time to learn EVERYone like I was able to with the earlier MKs. But I do have a handful of characters I'm fluent with or better and for me now that's: Kira, Mileena and Jade.
Then ofcourse there's Baraka which everyone is good with.
And I'll never play with Liu Kang or Shujinko because they are cheese characters to the max with their over-powering assortment of moves- especially Shujinko.
But I wish everyone could at least have 2-3 characters they could choose to alternate.
I'm so bored with fighting Liu Kangs, Shujinkos, Scorpions and Baraka's online I'm tempted to just disconnect at the select screen when they're picked. People need a bigger pool with at least 1 character that's a little challenging to play with.

dude...just learn to play with more than one character...hear me out....imma god damn mass murderer with havik and i know that...so i hardly ever use him! believe me ive tested my skills...and although im far from unbeatable...im pretty damn good...but i dont abuse that skill...if you know what im saying....its like save your best character as your secret weapon!!
fuck your skill level and score...they are known to all be mostly FAKE because of memory card accounts... so you never know whos really the best.
buuuuuut.....an underground tournament is how we find that out gentalmen! wink wink*!
i just wish they would of let you place bets !!online!! kindda like you could in DA!! that would make thing much more interesting ...dont ya'll think?

wow...couldn't agree with you guys any better. In fact, I started a thread about this on the PS2 Online Tournament board 2days ago... should be near the top. Check that thread out, got a lot of replies... mostly telling me how stupid I am, but I still hold my opinion.

shujinko is a push over...get night wolf and use his projectile reflect OR just get someone you know how to smother with..if you know what im saying...
just stay on top of him, go high, low then go high again..make him start blocking and then throw him...try to use some one whos throw cant be broken as well!
sure helps me!! you just gotta stay on him and keep moving FLUENTLY!! plan your attack and try to predict his! hope this helps!
and to the guy above, they are really flaming you on that ps2online board...fuck them!

Sounds like there is a couple of decent online players (as in etiquette) in here. Good to know they do actually exist.
My scoring solutions for future MKs would be to give double points to anyone who wins using Random select. This is to encourage players to learn most if not all fighters. It's only MK, not VF so this is possible with practice.
I also think ANY disconnect should go into the loss column. Perhaps disconnects can be in brackets next to total losses. Then it becomes obvious who plays fairly and graciously and who does not. Heck put a percentage of full losses as opposed to disconnects if necessary. High ratios of disconnects are an indicator of a sore loser.
Perhaps give Hara kiris a half point or something, to encourage losers to play on.

Though I've yet to play online, my friends play with nothing but scorpion. It gets old after awhile and I try to encourage them to test out other characters but usually a no go. But it's still better than beating arcade over and over again.
As for characters I use, My main 3 are Kenshi, Jade and Havik. But I also use Baraka and Nightwolf on occasion.

I hate it too. I play as scorpion occasionaly, but he's too easy to use. I usually go with either Lui Kang or Noob-Smoke

Yeah, I'm starting to hate Scorpion... He's one of my favorite characters, too, but I don't pick him every damn time! Matter of fact, most times I don't pick him at all because I've gotten so sick of playing him.
My policy has become, if you pick Scorpion more than once, I exit out on you after the second match. Especially after I've seen how cheaply some people play him. One guy literally stayed at max distance the whole match, and as soon as I'd drop my guard to go after him, he'd port kick, then retreat again, and try to run out the clock. I was using Kira, so my ranged options were decent, but not great. I didn't disconnect on him, because it that's not the sort of thing I do, but I said "NO" to the rematch so quick his head probably spun.
I personally am good with Sub-Zero, Kira and Liu Kang, and decent enough with Scorpion, Shujinko, Raiden, Ashrah and Kenshi that I pick them very often. That gives me 8 characters I'll use at any given time, when lots of people I play will only use one or two.
I've found a few cool people online, who will switch characters, even using characters they're not good with just for fun, which I try to do alot myself. Unfortunately, they're few and far between. I've played some noobs, and tried to help them out, telling them moves and fatalities (and usually, they're the nicest and most fun to play, usually, just willing to goof about instead of going all hardcore).
I usually won't talk first, but will definitely talk if spoken to, and will stick around longer when I'm losing if the guy on the other end seems cool... But most of the guys good enough to beat me regularly are usually either quiet or dicks, so that hasn't happened often.
I really, really wish the game didn't keep any stats other than disconnects, especially since it's so obvious that most of the "Top 50" on XBox Live are nothing but cheaters. 415-0? Bullshit! If you're good, you're good. If your a mediocre scrub like me, you're a mediocre scrub. Why do people need to have a record that makes them look better than they are?
I think the thing I'd like to find most is also the hardest thing to find... Someone you can go 50/50 with, wins and losses. You know, he wins, you win, you both have fun. But most of the time either I tool them repeatedly or they tool me repeatedly (and most of the people who tool me repeatedly use nothing but Liu Kang/Scorpion/Baraka). It's kinda disappointing.
BTW, I'm Xouldred on XBox Live, if anyone wants to game.

There are some really nice people you'll meet online, and there are a lot of dumbasses out there too. lol
Some folks will chat away with you while you play online via voicechat, which is good if they are of decent demeanour.
Trash talk is fun at times, as long as it's not just a string of obscenities or slurs you hear....that's just stupid.
I've played a lot of nice folks and a lot of nasty folks. *shrug*
One guy I played against was a really nice person to chat about the game with while we played.
I think we went for 6 or 7 matches straight playing and talking about stuff in the game. It made the online matchups more fun, really.
I think his nickname was SunSoul or something like that. I meant to add him to my friends list but I think the spelling was off and his name wasn't exactly that....ah well.
Hopefully he got me on his list as I said he could add me if he wanted.
I actually haven't played through arcade mode hardly at all as I spend
98% of my time in Konquest so my ability in arcade mode is lacking right now.
I can be decent with Kabal though as I've used him the most in Arcade mode, and I've seen Baraka & Sub-Zeros endings too, but that's honestly it. I really like Kobra and can do pretty well with him too.
I generally random select a lot to get myself used to everyone...though going in game completely blind not knowing ANY moves with a character can suck. lol
I've played Temperaryusername online as well as SubScorpTile from the forums, but didn't recognise anyone else I knew well from the chatroom/site.
I play on PS2 online, usually one day out of the weekend when I can whore my sisters high speed internet access...
My nickname on there is the same as it is here... Jonin01.

The way I pick my fighter? Up+Start. I'll only back up if I want to use that personals alt costume (its too bad theres no way to random the alt+costume), or if I have fought with the fighter a few times...random select has a tendancy to choose from a few certain fighters.
Playing from memory card on an Xbox is just cheap. Use the HDD like everyone else. Damn cheaters.

I tend to have favorite characters and/or characters that I am best with. I love playing as my favorite characters, and how often I play them is really a matter of percentage. I usually don't vary more than 5 characters so the breakdown would be soemthing like Noob-Smoke 40% of the time, Scorpion 15% of the time, Liu Kang 15% of the time, Kira 15% of the time, Sub-Zero 5% of the time, Kenshi 5% of the time, Ermac 4% of the time, and random 1% of the time. Many of my friends select "random" often when I play them in fighting games, and sometimes I do too so they don't feel like I'm cheating, but I simply can't understand how they can do that. Random drives me nuts... I play with characters that I like and who I know how to use.