Do you think Injustice 3 will be out in time to be on current platforms? Or will it be an early Gen 9 title. (Still not looking forward to having to buy a new console)
Just a “like” for mentioning Eternal Darkness. Underrated game that should be on its fifth sequel by now…
@Iago407 I think review bombing is complete ■■■■■■■■■ Anyone who says this game is a 2 because “MICROTRANSACTIONS!!!” Is an idiot. @R1stormrider there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Maximillian is saying the issue really has nothing to do with the microtransactions - it’s just that the game is too hard and the currencies are too hard to grinds. But you can’t just buy the currencies. And that’s actually what Max is complaining about “just let me pay $20 to unlock the whole Krypt.” The issue (as I understand it) is that the grind is nuts and there’s no way to pay your way out of it.
As usual, the internet is the new mob, with relatively small numbers of passionately wrong people able to cause chaos.
And the fuss is over too much difficulty unlocking completely optional accessories to play dress up doll with the characters. “Fans” hate everything. I just wish we could have a game release these days without the “fans” all trying to kill it, Storm the castle and burn the developers. These kind of histrionic overreactions aren’t going to “fix” gaming. They are just going to keep studios from investing in AAA games. NRS has been crushing it since MK9, but one strike out and you are basically done in this business. And people are actively lying in their reviews and trying to ruin the studio over unlockable costumes. I find it disgusting, frankly.
MK11 still gives you the most visually and cinematically impressive story mode in the history of fighting games. A 26 character roster with customizable variations. And online that actually works - unlike every single Japanese developed fighting game. FGC People are currently pumping up UNIEL and that game is $40, doesn’t have towers and ladders at all, there’s no outfits to unlock, the online is trash and they microtransaction you by charging $3 for round announcer voices of the characters already in the game. But it’s amazing and MK11 is greedy trash because the Towers of Time are too hard. Okay, sure.
People are allowed to not like whatever they don’t like, but all of this phony RAGE over trivia is wearing thin. I’m sick of hearing the phrase “they should have treated their customers better.” As customers, gamers are a bunch of whiny entitled ■■■■■■■■. People should actually play the game instead of crying over the fact that they can’t grind enough to u lock new cuff links for sub zero.
On another note, I finished the story mode. Some spoiler free opinions: I thought the ending was meh. But they have the universal comic book problem of the need to constantly escalate each new threat and each new conclusion. It all kind of collapses under its own weight eventually.
But I have to say, even though I wasn’t super impressed by the ending, I enjoyed the journey more than any other story mode in MK or Injustice. It’s just really impressive from a visual filmmaking perspective. The dialogue was pretty trash, but the emotional journey of several of the characters was pretty good.
So here’s my quick spoiler thoughts all jammed together so I don’t have to fuss too much with the spoiler tag:
I enjoyed Liu Kang and Raidens interactions. But I think Fire God Liu Kang is dumb. Again this is a “we need and even more
Ultimate hero!” Comic book problem. The scene of young Jax and Jackie arriving in the boat to Shang Tsung’s island was amazing from a cinematography standpoint. There’s one scene shot from behind them looking up from about waist height where you can’t see the boat at all and it’s like they’re hovering along. It’s so deliberately evocative of a horror movie. This is the kind of attention to detail and artistry that I find so Impressive. I think questions about time paradoxes and what this means for the future of the franchise are meaningless. They can do whatever they want and they always could. Half the current roster dies or is maimed in the current story. But that doesn’t stop them from being on the roster. But yeah, there’s huge plot holes and issues with character power balance and everything else. But why would anyone worry about that stuff? I thought the cage family drama was great. I thought Jax’s story could have benefitted from more screen time. We really didn’t get the emotional weight of his decisions, which was too bad. It could have been one if the most compelling plots. The same for Cetrion, although I think there’s an element of deliberate understatement to her personality in the story. She is devoted to her mother. Full stop. Lots of dead bodies in here. Also lots of potential dlc characters that I predict will not show up as dlc this making a bunch of people crazy just like in MKX.
@FallofSeraphs76 - I noticed they removed Scorpion’s ability to link his spin kick krushing blow after his uppercut krushing blow. I haven’t tested this I just noticed I couldn’t do it in the story mode. I’ll be interested to see if the same holds for Baraka’s .
@R1stormrider back to the subject of flawless blocks - I didn’t mean to give you any impression that I was annoyed. Your comments were accurate and clearly trying to be helpful. I have my own baggage around sitting in training stages trying to hit buttons with idiotically specific timing that I can’t do . I’ve never once completed a challenge set for a fighting game character and
It’s a special kind of hell in my view to keep having to mash those buttons over and over again just to try to get through it.
I played Baraka earlier and I wasnt able to hit the combo…but I also was winging it as I never used Baraka before in the beta eccept for like 1 match. Ill test out Scorpion here in a bit. Lets hope it was just due to story mode as the combat is a bit modified in story in some aspects but not sure why you wouldnt be able to do it anymore.
I do know there is so much to do, unlock, try, ect… its overwhelming. Someitmes I dont know where to start or work on lol
1 Like
Not talking MK2, I meant the MK11 mask specifically.
I dunno, I’m kind of doubtful on that score. Armageddon had 60ish characters no? There’s only so many ways to dismember, disembowl, or explode a guy you know? Hardware limitations certainly have a role to play (MKX covered for samey fatalities by varying the gore/grotesqueness of the kills), but at the same time that’s just a lot of effort to put into individualized fatalities for a roster that big. Especially if we’re talking fatalities of the quality/creativity of the modern MK’s. You’d spend a huge chunk of development time just brainstorming them, to say nothing of the work involved with actually bringing them to life. I think if MK’s roster gets really big in a single title you’re almost certain to wind up with Armageddon-style concessions, at least on the fatality front.
In terms of the actual gameplay, I’m a pretty big believer that massive rosters mostly leave a product with a bunch of kinda-garbage characters and a few good ones. As a fun party game it could probably work I guess, but if you try to plug it into the modern FG ecosystem (complete with tournaments and the like) I doubt it would be a very good game. You’d definitely lose the variationsystems NRS has been implementing for the past few years (your mileage may vary on how good or bad that is), but even then it’d still be really tough to make a game that’s both sensibly balanced and good/fun to play with 60+ characters.
As for drag and drop, I kind of doubt the old engines are particularly compatible with the new. And in any case you’d almost have to revisit those older 3D characters’ movesets - those games kind of suck in retrospect from a gameplay perspective. 
all good, i knew you werent annoyed. it is as you say, i was only tryin to help
as for the fan revolt its making them look at the mess, if it fixes it im all for it. good customer treatment goes a long way
1 Like
Definitely next gen.
Production would yield it to be a 2021/2022 release
- the va for Starfire in Injustice2 is now Kitana, Geras VA is unexpected-
1 Like
So they continue on from their streak of replacing MKs iconic voices (starting with Johnny in MKX) and now they’ve replaced nearly everyone. Including Scorpion, Kitana, and KANO. Two of them having the most iconic voices in MK. And who’s still around? Richard ■■■■■■■ Epcar.
I swear, if that leak was right and Joker is in this game he’ll be doing the voice despite Mark Hamill going full throttle back on doing Joker’s voice again. I’m still mad.
2 Likes
Been having fun online as Jade. Her strong mid-range attacks and bits of zoning are satisfying, though she has almost no options to convert off of anything as far as I can tell. Not sure I’ll stick with her for much longer.
Exactly this. If WB or NRS were trying to unfairly monetize this game with the insane grind that’s there right now, their tiny premium store with five random items per day wouldn’t do much to accomplish that. Just letting people pay an extra $20 like MKX did would likely have been much more effective at making money.
The mercy of this whole debacle is that it should be pretty easy for NRS to fix. All they have to do is make currency rewards more generous, and make better gear drop more often.
2 Likes
Well, I’m downloading the game on Steam right now. 
You know what. People keep asking NRS for Shaolin Monks 2. Why not give the project to Omega Force? Make a Mortal Kombat Warriors game.
Okay. I get why they don’t want Kronika on the base roster, but why couldn’t we have had like, a boss mode like Marvel vs. Capcom where you control her against jacked up CPUs.
the source i got the info from is quite reputable, he has decades of experience in the industry and knows his stuff. hes currently covering the epic games store exclusivity stuff thats going on and is making waves amongst gamers who are up in arms over it. you can call it baseless on however many levels you wish, but it doesnt matter. EA isnt stupid, they enjoyed a surge in stocks and recovered from back to back disasters with battlefront 2’s lootbox incident and BF5.
what transpired is not just stolen thunder from a high profile AAA release in anthem, but also damage mitigation for its predicted failure by utilizing apex legend’s surprise launch a few weeks in advance. it was a calculated gamble on EA’s part and it couldve paid more had they kept tabs on respawn which they did not. they left them entirely to their own devices. its quite unfortunate, bioware has a prestigious history and now its future is up in the air with a potential visit from the executioner’s axe. shame
I understand people’s frustration at unwanted monetization. But again, that’s pretty clearly not what’s going on here if you look at the evidence. My problem is I have an almost obsessive desire to have fact based discussions, and so often in these situations people just make up stuff: “WB made them do this for moniezzzz!!!” But there’s actually zero evidence of that. As it is now, you simply can’t “buy” your way out of the difficulty. Which makes me inclined to believe NRS when they say it is simply an unintended difficulty issue that was overlooked as the game got shipped.
And, frankly, even if it was a malicious attempt to grab cash from consumers (putting aside all the arguments about whether or not trying to make money is bad), the response is disproportionate. If my neighbor doesn’t cut his grass and his lawn looks bad, I don’t burn down his house to “teach him that he needs to take better care of it.” These rage campaigns are a blunt instrument - and they have a huge negative impact on the target but they have been largely ineffective at changing the landscape of game development and monetization. A lot of that is because the gamer community refuses to admit the basic reality that game development is a tough business with tight margins and developers need can’t keep making and selling higher and higher quality games, with bigger and bigger development budgets, involving larger and larger teams of peoples (seriously, watch the Kredits in MK11. It’s like the end of The Avengers - multiple visual effects studios in the credits and literally thousands of people named in the credits), but charge the same $60 price they have been charging for over 20 years now. Instead, people look at the CEO of EA and say “he made millions! they are ripping us off!” Looking at CEO compensation is not really a good indicator of whether an industry has high margins. The CEO compensation isn’t a significant portion of the publishers budget. WB spent more on marketing for MK11 than they did paying their CEO. But no one wants to hear that making games cost money.
I know I’m ranting - and I know you aren’t storming the castle. But I just can’t get over the fact that gamers and game developers are not somehow opponents in a class warfare struggle over game prices. We are actually teammates - both pursuing the goal of having awesome games. And as a community we are constantly throwing our teammates under the bus instead of supporting them. Yes, developers need to not ■■■■■ their customers. But I actually think they are doing a lot better than most gamers give them credit for. And NRS has never been a shady operation.
1 Like
As far as what is going on with MK11’s Krypt, it’s clear that NRS designed it with the intention of being a very long grind. A long grind of unlocks helps keep people playing the game with a sense of progression, and randomized drops ensure people aren’t all running around online with the same fan-favorite cosmetics. These things can exist to the benefit of the experience rather than just a monetization strategy. Grinding isn’t exactly new to the Krypt in MK, but the new design sensibilities to it are things many developers have been exploring in past years.
Sometimes when these systems go wrong they really are just part of shameless money grabs, at other times they’re just badly tuned by people who don’t have experience designing them. Given how bare-bones and RNG-dependent MK11’s Store is, I’m inclined to believe the Krypt suffers from the latter. There’s hardly a single thing that is convenient about it, compared to just grinding out the Krypt, that would compel anyone to spend money on Time Krystals.
The only scenario I can imagine someone doing so is opening the Store page, seeing one of the 5 items that just happens to be something they really want that day, and spending $5-10 on a whim for it. On top of Time Krystals being incredibly overpriced if you’re planning to purchase more than a couple skins, you still have nearly zero agency on what you’re able to buy at any given time. If the goal of all this is to entice people to pay more money than try their luck in the Krypt, it’s very limited for that purpose.
2 Likes
Yeah, I get that it’s a weapon for fans to speak to the devs in a way they’ll more easily hear and understand, but review bombing just feels irresponsible to me. If I was hearing buzz about a game that I might be interested in, but wasn’t quite sure, and I looked at Metacritic right now, I’d be repelled by that score and probably wouldn’t even read the reviews.
The problem is that even if all the problems get fixed, that score likely won’t change a ton in the next 6 months, so it kinda seems unfair to the devs. Of course, as R1 said above, they had the chance to get it right the first time. Still though, I hate the idea of my favorite gaming franchise getting raked over the coals and it sucks seeing people’s hard work get bashed, especially when they likely had nothing to do with the issues.
I definitely don’t think NRS is done by any means, but I get what you’re saying. I think the overreaction comes, in part, by people that are being vocal because they want something fixed because it’s a big problem in the game and they want the game to be as good in some places as it is in other places. The story, the actual gameplay, the graphics, the movelist concept, etc are all fantastic. Some people just want to see the glaring issues resolved.
Of course, there are others that just want to trash the game either because they hate the series, they hate fighting games, they hate microtransactions or they just like to complain. As you said, it’s not an issue with microtransactions. It’s an issue with the grind and the tower difficulty.
I would also throw out there that the whole in-game economy is over the top. Coins, souls, hearts, time crystals, bypass coins, fatality tokens, augments, several consumables that you unlock, craft and get as rewards in the krypt just so you can have a chance against some of the insanely unbalanced towers.
That’s more the problem here. It’s not just the “unlocking stuff to play dress up doll” aspect. Getting those three currencies to use in the krypt to unlock anything means playing through these towers that are far too difficult and extremely frustrating. If you think that getting consumables by playing, crafting them with recipes and getting them as rewards in the krypt sounds less than fun, then the whole loop of getting consumables and augments to beat horrendous towers so you can get more loot to go unlock stuff which may just result in more consumables or art work or other stuff that’s not really worth the 13,000 koins or the hearts or souls you just spent.
That whole economy the game has is a pretty significant part of the single player loop and it’s part of just about everything outside of the story and (I believe) the online experience. So yeah, I hope this stuff gets fixed. As someone that’s played enough of the towers at this point to judge objectively, it’s fairly broken. They’re aware of it, so hopefully it’s done soon.
Look, I get it. I’m not a fan of the entitlement gamers have and that whole “the customer’s always right, even when they’re complete ■■■■■■■■ to devs and don’t treat them like human beings” garbage. I hate it. I despise it, in fact.
But a not so insignificant part of the game is currently broken and it’s a part that many people enjoy, even if you don’t or don’t care about it. So I’m glad people spoke up. Many reviewers spoke up as well, though thankfully they at least had the sense to take the WHOLE game in to account.
For my part, I just want the issues fixed, and I really hope that in the next game, they’ll forego the multiple currencies, the consumables and all that crap. It’s a layer of economy on top of something would be way more fun without it. That said, I’m not screeching at the developers and it’d be great if everyone else could voice their opinion without the rage, the torches and pitchforks. I’m in 110% agreement with you there.
I agree. I’m certainly curious where things will go now. It kinda seems as though they’ve just set things up to go in a new direction. We’ll see. It was a fun story for the trilogy, even with some of the logical inconsistencies, temporal paradoxes and all that stuff. But for me, a lot of that was just “don’t pull at the thread” type stuff. As you said above, it’s not Shakespeare.
Same here. I didn’t mind the dialog as much, and I definitely enjoyed this story more than any other in any fighting game. MK9 had the nostalgia going for it, but I’d still say MK11’s was better in nearly every way possible. Just about all of the characters got a nice focus and had some compelling story beats and that’s what I wanted the most out of the story. The journey was fun, and that’s the most important part to me.
Yeah, I think a lot of outlets and certainly a lot of fans are using the word microtranactions when that’s not even what’s happening here. As far as I know, time crystals are the only currency you can buy and that’s just for the small amount of stuff that’s in the store.
My issue, as I said above, is that they’ve layered this whole economy on top of everything, with multiple currencies, consumables and several aspects surrounding them and they’re forcing players in to this economy by ratcheting up the difficulty in the towers. Now, are they doing it for profit? No. I don’t see how they could be. But virtually all aspects of this economy are not fun and do not enhance the experience in any positive ways, at least in my opinion.
A lot of the aspects that they’re using here, with crafting consumables and getting gear augments and all this other stuff feels like it’s taken out of a pay to win mobile game. Again, is it forcing predatory microtransactions on fans? No. Is any of it any fun? I’d still say no.
Well that’s a whole separate issue and one that reflects several aspects of our society right now in terms of wage disparity. It’s especfially relevant for the games industry given how many developers are forced to be interns or contract workers for so long, have minimal benefits, and are worked in to the ground thanks to companies that begin the crunch period six or seven months before a game comes out.
But yeah, in relation to games costing so much money to make, CEO salaries and wage disparity are not the problem by any stretch. I definitely agree there.
I think there’s a definite line between constructive feedback and wanting a game to work the way it should and essentially terrorizing human beings that make games because you think the squeaky wheel gets the grease and these people are a perfect outlet for your rage. Far too often, we see people treating other people like garbage and assuming the worst. The fact that it’s the reality of the internet may explain this phenomenon, but it sure as hell doesn’t justify it.
Don’t think I saw this mentioned anywhere. It’s a dev post on Reddit: Reddit - Dive into anything
Here’s a summary of the Kombat Kast information from today from NetherRealm:
At launch, the difficulty in the Towers of Time was too high, and people felt it was unfair. And unfortunately, that made the process of earning rewards through the Krypt seem punishingly slow.
The game was never designed to encourage in-game purchases. NetherRealm doesn’t make games that way. We do not artificially drive people towards in-game purchases.
The difficulty of the AI and the aggressiveness of the modifiers in Towers of Time was tuned too high. We’re aware of it and we’ve already taken steps to fix that.
Through a server update, we’ve reduced AI maximum health and adjusted the frequency and cooldowns of many modifiers. In addition we’ve made many unblockable modifiers blockable.
We are also working on a patch as quickly as we can to address several other factors, including increasing currency rewards and tweaking other modifier values that couldn’t be addressed in our tweakvar update. We’re shooting to have the patch out this week, early next week at the latest.
There are some things in Towers that are meant to be very challenging. We are trying to cater to many different types of players. Right now, everything is too challenging, and that wasn’t the intention.
As for the store, we want to stress that none of the in-game currencies (Hearts, Souls, Koins) are for sale. You also cannot buy Konsumables or Augments. You cannot purchase anything that impacts gameplay at all. Only cosmetics (including Easy Fatalities), and Time Krystals are available in the store.
Also, there is some speculation that Krypt rewards are random. They are not. There are over 600 chests in the Krypt, and they are ALL hand-crafted with specific rewards. Every player has the same chests. The only “randomness” is where each chest is placed for each player. This was done to ensure that each player would have a unique discovery experience.
As we work on the patch, we’re issuing a gift to all of our players. A bundle of in-game kurrency. This will allow you to have the experience we always intended, while we re-balance the system to bring it in line with our vision. Thank you for playing the game. We value our players above all else, and you having a fun experience with our game is what this is all about.
1 Like
I could not have said this better.
Don’t mistake me. It’s clear the tower and krypt grind at MK11 is broken and needs to be fixed. I haven’t touched either yet, but I’m totally on board with this idea and with letting NRS know. It’s the lack of perspective and proportionality if the response that bugs me.
There’s another rich discussion to be had about the difference between the 4 million people who bought the game to play and view the cosmetics and unlocks as cool extras - and will probably not unlock more than 25% of them and the 100,000 or so hardcore, gaming as religion guys who don’t think a game is “played” until they unlock everything. I am fine with both types of player but the latter type tend to not recognize that developers have to cater to the former as well. It’s actually quite hard - even in theory crafting - to think of ways to incentivize players to keep playing your game for a long time. So failure to hit the perfect balance out of the gate just seems like a very predictable challenge and seems like one of the areas where we should cut developers some slack. As versus things like not having server capacity or having non functional online on launch day - which is a recurrent and easily fixable problem.
1 Like