Obviously you like what you like and you don’t like what you don’t like. I played MK11 for two hours last night just running casual matches against my brother - his Sub Zero against my day 1 Shang Tsung. We had a lot of fun even though neither of us is going to win Evo and we barely touched the games content. It still has great mechanics, terrific online and some of the best visual effects associated with a fighting game I’ve ever seen.
It seems like the majority of your frustration is around the unlocking mechanics in the game. This is a pretty common frustration and I completely agree that the way they have instituted the grinding mechanics could be a lot better. I don’t really understand all the complaining about Frost being locked. It’s easy as hell to unlock her just by getting halfway through the story mode. Having unlockable characters isn’t really a new thing associated with MK11. Half the cast of vanilla SFIV was hidden when you started the game. As far back as Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate even online focused modern fighters have had characters that you unlock by beating the story mode. In that game you had to beat the arcade ladder dozens of times with each character to unlock that character’s alternate costumes. Is that better or worse than MK11?
I’m not shilling for MK11. Everyone has their own priorities and games that they like. I have Tekken 7 and frankly, I just can’t make myself like it. I’m not that into Tekken and the terrible load times drive me crazy. Plus the online is mediocre at best. SCVI is hugely disappointing to me. Not because it’s not a great game. It’s amazing. But I’ve discovered that Soul Calibur is a nostalgia goggles game for me and I absolutely hate playing the game at a “competetive” (here meaning playing online against random scrubs like me) level. It drives me nuts. But I can still look at the game and appreciate what they’ve done. And I just feel like with MK11 people are making themselves crazy worrying about not having the face mask that they want instead of enjoying what is objectively an MK game that has vast improvements over previous games in the series.
People want things ASAP today. I’m no stranger to that one, but online wise, super off putting. Kombat League doesn’t have much of the rewards that I would want anyway so what’s the point of me reaching Elder God status?
The grinding in this game is boring, too much gear to unlock but to grind for Augment slots (two out of three and I hope we’re not paying anything for a third slot) for each piece of gear sounds hopelessly tedious.
They don’t even have a feature where it shows you if you’re at 20% or 50% completion with the game as a whole and for a game like MK11, that should be a big red flag.
Speaking of red flags. Since when was it a great idea to lock the Krypt, behind an online server? Really, I want to know why that was a great idea in the first place.
Mk11 is one of my favorite fighting games for single player content at the moment. I actually enjoy combat more than mk9, my absolute favorite mk title. The grind in 11 could be less in my opinion but I don’t have an accessory that I am really looking for at the moment, so personally I don’t feel the grind as much as others. Most of the time I don’t even realize what I unlocked. Just opening chests is fulfilling enough
Unfortunately, in Japan it’s impossible to play mk competitively due to the game not being for sale here. Despite this, I never had plans to become good at this game as I do not like the mechanics in general. I just hope the game continues to do well and will have some decent longevity.
Frost unlocks if you play the story mode. If you want to pay $5.99 to avoid the story mode that’s your business. But I don’t see why you would complain that NRS has provided the option to do it. I also don’t know what pre-orders have to do with it. Shao Khan was the pre-order bonus character.
I don’t know why the Krypt is run off a server. Normally this kind of thing is done to prevent cheating when people have the opportunity to spend real money on things. The Krypt really doesn’t allow you to do that, so maybe it was a design decision where they dropped the monetization in the Krypt but didn’t go back and “Unicode” the online requirement. But, frankly, it’s an online world. Everybody freaked out at the launch of Xbox One but there’s a huge number of games that require you to be online - including just about every one of my kids’ iPad games. I mean, we can shake our fists at the sky and be all bothered by it if we want to. But it essentially hasn’t had any impact on my experience with MK11 whatsoever.
This is essentially your problem right here. You’re approaching the game with a completionist mentality. I know a lot of people play games that way, and I’ve been known to have OCD about in-game acquisitions so I’m not unsympathetic. But you basically can’t play MK11 that way - unless you want to make yourself nuts.
Instead of focusing on the stuff you can’t or don’t want to unlock, why not look at the game in front of you and see what it has to offer? Again, if you don’t like the game that’s fine. But I don’t know. I just still feel like everyone is complaining about the Ferrari because they don’t like the cup holders and fuzzy dice. Maybe someone buys a Ferrari for the cup holders. But if I’m buying one it’s for other reasons. And I didn’t buy MK11 to get a 100% achievement.
It’s clear that one of their goals with MK11 was to extend the single player life of the game so that casual buyers wouldn’t just beat the story mode and then the story tower with each character, do all the fatalities once, and then go back to call of duty. So they added a lot of content. No one will play a lot of content if there are no rewards. So they added a system of rewards. Did they get the formula right? Clearly not. Is it the way I would do it? No. But I can see why they did it the way they did. And I just don’t see any reason for getting so upset about it. It seems disproportionate to me.
As I understand it, this case is different. Just like how in KI you could level up to unlock characters’ customization items and colors, OR you could pay KI Gold to unlock them early. I don’t see that as paid DLC on the disc (so to speak), it’s a shortcut which is NOT required in order to get what you want.
I don’t need to read Cinemablend’s opinion piece on the subject and debate them. Why should I give a ■■■■ what they think? I think they are full of ■■■■ and there’s nothing wrong with on disc DLC. The game that got killed by on disc DLC was SF X Tekken, and you know what happened? Instead of on disc DLC that you can unlock we get discs that have nothing on them and require a huge day 1 update. Yay? Score one for the consumer? The whole backlash of on disc dlc is a complete and total distraction from real issues about cost vs value. As if whether they are selling you content off the disc or selling you the same content that’s not on the disc somehow mattered.
And as has been stated. FROST IS NOT PAID DLC. FROST IS FREE UNLOCKABLE CONTENT. What you are paying for is the speed of the unlock. As with everything, if you think that doesn’t make sense (
…I feel like nobody is going to get me unless I explain myself so here I go once again.
One. Frost being “optionally” locked behind a paywell should not have been a thing. Instead, why not Reptile or better yet, Chameleon? Frost wasn’t even a popular choice from day one and that’s where NRS made the mistake. People come from times where unlockable characters are a thing and nobody had to pay a dime. Clearly devs need to make money but using Frost? No. No ■■■■■■■ way.
Two. Re-rolling augments slots or even unequiping augments for 1000 koins. Correct me if I’m captain ■■■■■■■ for having this opinion but that ■■■■ is annoying too. Might as well have already tied them with some of the optional gears instead.
Three. Gambling Koins at The Shrine for Gear not accessible after refilling the Chests. I know, “There he goes with this ■■■■ again”, but are we really not going to see a problem with that? The problem is that the more koins I put in (for example 100,000 koins, I should at least get more gear or music or even concept art, not just one ■■■■■■■ skin! That tier system has got to get fixed or if not removed.
You see why I don’t see the point of playing this ■■■■■■■ game now?
I’m not ready to say fantastic yet but he’s a step up from classic Nightwolf for sure.
Okay, it’s clear that you are unhappy with the “gameplay loop” and the decisions surrounding MK11’s unlockable content. And you know what? That’s 100% fine. You don’t need to justify that in any way. If that’s making your experience with the game not fun then stop playing. That’s the right choice for you. No questions asked.
But if you want to know how other people feel about these same things then I’m happy to try to explain why I feel differently. But honestly, if you don’t want to hear it that’s great too. Just stop reading.
Regarding Frost. I’m not really sure I get how it would be different to have Reptile or Chameleon as unlockable characters. Because they have historically been hidden characters in previous MK games? Okay, sure. But that’s nothing to do with the philosophical question of whether DLC to speed up unlockable content is or is not okay. I’m honestly having trouble understanding the issue. Did you (or someone you know) buy Frost by mistake not realizing she was unlockable an hour into story mode? I’m just not seeing the problem. Lots of games sell accelerators for in game progress - including KI for shadow lords. Many RPG style games give XP accelerators to “premium” purchasers (Forza games do this for example). Is it scummy? I think so. When games require you to grind to achieve status and you can buy your way out of a huge number of hours that seems pretty scuzzy to me. But the practice is here to stay because people are happy to pay. And I think MK11’s version of this (pay $5 to avoid playing 90 minutes of the best story mode in the history of fighting games) is maybe the weirdest example but not the scuzziest. I feel like their has to be more to the story for someone to hate this so much. But maybe we just have fundamentally different world views.
Regarding the loot system, Koin gambling at the shrine, Krypt construction etc. Yeah, I haven’t heard anyone say they like this. I find it tolerable. The issue here is that the “magic” of grindy games comes from an enjoyable reward loop. You enjoy the mechanics of the game, you grind for some reward, you get the reward, then you keep grinding for better rewards. I think MK is the best MK game ever to play against the CPU. So the mechanic is okay. The challenge is they have added another grind - wandering around the Krypt looking for unopened or refilled chests - that is decidedly unfun (even if you think exploring the Krypt is fun, it’s tough to make a case that reloading the chests with random stuff is fun. Maybe someone likes it I guess…). Then they have added randomness to this mechanic. Randomness is one of those things that sets people off but I don’t think is fundamentally a problem. Random loot drops have been a thing forever in gaming. It’s making the randomness frustrating and forcing you to sit through an annoying sub game mechanic (the Krypt) that makes adding randomness on top of it aggravating. I get it. I played the Krypt until I got tired of it and now I’m done. I haven’t done much with the stuff I got in there anyway.
As far as re-rolling the augments, this is pretty basic. You can either be stuck with what you get at random or they can let you re-roll it. But if they give you a free re-roll mechanic you just sit there re-rolling until you get the one you want. So they gate it with a (nominal) in game cost. That makes sense to me. The fact that augments are dumb and overly complicated is a separate issue. My solution to this is to flat out ignore the augments. I haven’t even tried to assign them to most of my characters and I beat the towers just fine.
Interestingly, not one of the things you have mentioned has anything to do with playing the fighting game. It’s not that you don’t like the characters, the fight mechanics, the sound. It’s the unlock grind. Which is why I previously said essentially “ignore it and just play the game.” But if what you like about gaming is unlocking stuff, well then yeah. Don’t play MK11.
Okay I ca understand why some folks don’t like DLC but it’s not all bad. I understand that no one has cash to burn but there are still up sides. like adding in characters people wanted but never got. while I can say from my experience with mk11 DLC won’t be doing that for me. But again it’s not all bad.
But after reading the previous posts that does explain what 's been happening. Plus I’m sure others have said you could play the story to unlock her. Granted it does seem odd to add the option. I think most would just play the story anyway.
Then why even bother bringing the DLC issue up to begin with? Shaolin Khan was a free reward for preordering the game. Frost was a free reward for playing the story mode (not even beating it). I bought the premium edition to get the season of DLC, but other than that, the game hasn’t given me any reason to spend a dime on it.
As far as Frost being an unlockable character, I personally love having another 3D era character get a new coat of paint. As much as I like the original trilogy characters, we see so many of them in every game, so it’s nice to get some curveballs.
Anyways, I personally love this game. Most fun I’ve had with an MK game since MK2. I love the slower down pace and how combos connect, crossing up feels better than MKX, the meter system is vastly improved, the roster has a good number of my favorites, towers of time keeps me coming back for more…
Speaking of which, the reward loop in this game is long term, and I love that. KI felt largely the same. I play the game because I enjoy it, and the rewards are okay, but secondary to the core experience. They’re a minor reason to keep going; a part of the journey as opposed to the destination. At least that’s how I look at it.
I hope you keep playing if you enjoy the game itself and just let the rest of the stuff come naturally, but if you’re not in to the game enough that you really only care about getting some items or whatever and you’re frustrated, well, I don’t blame you. To each his own.
I don’t know. I still have mixed feelings about this game. It’s lookking up with the DLC as the roster gets bigger and more cool characters get added… but the customization and Krypt are both still poorly implemented (at least I think, I haven’t touched them in months) and the story is still… something I don’t like. Plus I’m still not a fan of the changes to super moves. Overall, it’s still like an 8/10 game. Really wish it was a 10. It so easily could have been a 10. It’s sad really.
I just wish MK11 had better music. The game feels so boring without good music. That’s my biggest complaint of the game. I want to feel pumped up when playing the game.
