I really don’t get the sentiment about “the grind” in this game. What are you grinding for, exactly, that you’re not getting?
I wouldn’t say that I’ve played MK11 more than a lot of other people here, but I still have a ton of stuff that I like for each character, including maskless Sub-Zero, maskless Skarlet and a wide variety of other stuff for characters.
If you’re just playing this game in order to grind it to completion, then I can tell you that’s likely not going to happen for a long time and the reasons why make all the sense in the world for both the fans and players.
NRS games typically have a large buy in at the beginning and then a pretty quick drop off in terms of player base within the first month or two. NRS has really tried to remedy that issue with the last Injustice and now MK11.
They’ve really tried to make their games tournament viable, they’ve also given players tons of stuff to do, tons of items to earn through towers and unlock in the krypt, and they keep increasing the amount of DLC characters from game to game.
Now they have these seasons which you can unlock even more stuff, which I’m personally enjoying a lot. I wouldn’t have tried playing online if not for the seasons and I’m really liking it. It’s nice to find out that I can at play to a near .500 average by the time the season ends. Plus, it gives me even more to do between DLC characters.
This is honestly the longest I’ve stuck with an MK game since MK2 and I played the crap out of that game primarily because I always had friends nearby to play match after match with. I’ve played MK11 almost entirely solo. I’d have to think many players are in that boat as well.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that the game’s also really fun to play. I’ve learned Kung Lao to the point where I know his fastest attacks, when I should try to attack, defend, or do nothing, what strategy I want to employ, what moves I need to use to adapt to the opponents strategy, when to use certain combos and mixups and I’ve gotten to a level where I feel the mind games, the conditioning, etc actually come in to play and while NONE of that makes me “good” at the game, it allows me to enjoy it on a deeper level than I normally would.
All of that is a (very) long way of saying that I’m enjoying the journey. Sure there are mini destinations off in the distance in the form of DLC characters, and sure maybe sometime in a year or two, I’d like to have a vast majority of the available stuff for each character, but why would I care about that right now? I’m just having fun playing, and I like the feeling that I’m also unlocking stuff, getting more koins to unlock stuff, and so on and so forth.
My only gripe right now is that I don’t have anything to spend souls and hearts on anymore, so two game currencies are essentially useless to me. I was kinda hoping they’d add new areas to Shang Tsung’s Island to explore, with a bunch of chests to unlock, over time. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Either way though, that one gripe aside, I’m just enjoying the game a lot. I still have nights where it sucks me in for a lot more time than I originally intended, and that’s saying something for a game that’s been out for a few months already. I’ve purchased other games since, but this is the one I keep coming back to.
If you don’t enjoy the gameplay and the characters enough to keep playing, I can understand that. Anything beyond that though seems like it might be a bit of a strange reason to uninstall it, but whatever.
