So it was a code name.
No. It was his actual name early in development. Character names change over time, especially for newbies.
I think some of you just need to relax and let the roster reveal itself in the coming weeks. THere is no need in getting worked up or disappointed over something that is speculation.
I do hope Reptile makes it though along with Kotal Khan, Erron Black and that Havok guy.
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If I don’t speculate I have literally NOTHING else to do! I’m so bored! And none of the games I play or follow are giving me anything I can even pretend to have fun with. Let me have this. Please.
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Well here’s an update on it. Though it might be old news to you.
Well… it’s easy to see how you can be a flat earther.
The gist of your comment is that the developers at NRS don’t want to put the effort in, otherwise they would release a bigger roster. Your basis for saying this is that you think it would make money. This assertion is backed by no particular analysis, and not even a very strong hypothetical. Just an ego based assertion that because you want it, it makes sense for them to do it. Therefore they are failing and you know best how to do their job.
It’s really tough to respond to this kind of comment without just saying it’s a self absorbed delusion. Especially when some of your suggestions reveal that you real don’t have any understanding of even basic project management (ie you can’t just hire 2x thenstaff, produce 2x the content and therefore make 2x the money). But for the sake of conversation here are the things that you currently don’t know or understand that I think you would absolutely need to know to even begin to support the suggestions you are making:
- Incremental cost of each character added to an MK game
- Time in terms of staff hours
- Incremental return on investment per character as a function of roster size and sales
- Numbers comparing DLC sales and profitability compared to base game as well as “Komplete Edition” re release sales.
- Understanding of the brand management plan that has led NRS to make 3 new MK games in the last decade instead of just expanding MK9 with HD re-releases and roster updates.
To be clear - if you want to say “I want a bigger roster” that’s great. If you want to say “they could make a bigger roster if they wanted to,” that’s also fine. But “they could make a bigger roster, it would be more successful, but they don’t because they have a half assed attitude,” is not okay. If you want to assert that you know better than NRS how to make and sell MK games and question their commitment to the franchise many of them have been working on since 1992? Well then you need to bring some facts with you and not just be talking 
.
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Huh. Alright then. 
Ah. This is more helpful and worth responding to. This is exceptionally untrue however, as balance matters only within the context of what the rest of the cast can do. Azwel’s insane walk speed in SC6 would’ve been super balanced - if all the other members of the cast had actually been able to catch him. Eyedol’s original j.HP would’ve been ok to keep - if everyone had access to a Hisako or Kim style parry/counter. Arbiter’s jump gun loop that did 40% one-chance damage would have been fine - if everyone had Aganos-style armor that made the confirm less free.
Move “strength” is relevant only within the context of what the opponent can do against it. Cable shat on 85% of the Marvel vs Capcom 2 roster because he had full screen normals that were completely unpunishable on block, but that tool was pretty irrelevant to the top 3 or 4 characters in the game. It isn’t possible to just make a character in a vacuum and assume balance because you didn’t give them anything “crazy” - it’s only within the context of the rest of the cast that a character’s tools can be seen to be strong or weak. All “overpowered” tools are not created equal.
I haven’t been super hyped up for a game in many, many years. Interested, excited, very much looking forward to - absolutely. But never that same breathless excitement like I got when we saw the first trailer/gameplay combo for Halo 2. The first KI got pretty close, and as Anthem nears I’ve been getting really excited about that. But overall I’m older, and over the years I’ve seen enough games and enough of gaming that breathless excitement isn’t really a thing anymore. I think it’s just a part of growing up…you still absolutely love your hobbies, but the way you appreciate them changes a bit 
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It’s weird. I’m happy the game exists and will certainly love playing it, but at the same time I’m not excited for it in the slightest and wish they were making something else. It’s like two completely contradicting opinions are in my head simultaneously both trying to express themselves.
Part of it was my fault, i convinced myself that they were making the Slasher fighter and I was looking forward for the “I told you so” moment when I was right and everyone else was wrong. But… I was wrong. And I’m disapointed. I know I should’t be mad that they’re not making a game that I pretty much just made up, but I kind of am. And I know if they weren’t making this there’s no guarantee they’d be making the slasher fighter. I don’t know. I’m just…
Let me put it this way. My first reaction to the MK11 reveal was one of “Really. Just. Another Mortal Kombat. Nothing Special or cool. Just. More MK. yay?” I got a bit excited at the reveal event but now that’s just kind of… gone. I hate to say it but I almost wish MK11 didn’t exist. At least not yet.
And it hurts me to say it because everything they’ve shown us looks absolutely phenomenal. And they’re bringing back Kabal. And Skarlet. And Frost! They’re actually giving me a tonne of what I specifically asked for in an MK game (you know how much I complain about never getting what I want from the games industry). I should be really happy and excited and stoked to play it. But, I’m just not.
You know what it is, it’s this pre-release song and dance that they do every single time. It’s gotten old to me. Granted i never experienced the pre-release culture of MK9 or Injustice 1. My first NRS title was Injustice and I bought it launch day, but I found out about it like, the week before. And there wasn’t much DLC speculation as far as I could tell. Granted I was in Middle School and didn’t understand forums, but the season pass was leaked fairly quickly, and J’onn and Zatanna were’t all that… built up. After liking Scorpion in Injustice I bought MK9 and MKvsDCU used and had a blast all weekend playing through them. Then I moved on. I was always thinking about Injustice in the back of my mind, but I had other games to play and shows to watch. Then the MKX reveal happened. That was cool. The drip feed was new and exciting and the new characters were all so cool. And they brought back Shinnok! My favorite MK baddy (a conclusion I reached after looking into the series history). And I could PLAY as Goro! It was nothing but hype and excitement all the way to the end. The DLC got revealed and released rather quickly, but I didn’t care. MKX was my high school game along with KI. They actually complimented each other very well. They built hype off of one another, and Season 3 filled the void after XL dropped. Then the Injustice 2 reveal in my senior year happened. I felt so smart, I predicted the reveal the exact month it happened (isolated from most online discussion about it though, these forums were strictly for KI only at the time to me). I remember predicting pretty much the entire roster and getting it correct. It was like clockwork and I felt like a god. I even got the DLC right (I predicted the Turtles before we even knew the full base roster). I2 took me through my first two years of college.
Now we come to MK11. I thought the idea of just doing another MK game was kind of silly. It was too soon. They needed a shakeup to keep things interesting. I was sure I knew what that shakeup was. But no. Just same old same old. And that clockwork that made me feel godlike in high school now saddens me. I tried to mix up the characters I predicted. Surely, they’d shake up the roster by bringing back a lot of older 3D era characters. That would be new and exciting (especially sense this is the third modern MK 
). And now we know the whole roster (thanks to leaks) and it’s jarringly safe. Easily predicted if you just took a cursory glance at Ed Boon’s re-tweets. Nothing about this game really feels special. It’s just, another Mortal Kombat game.
I think that’s the heart of my problem. I felt the studio, or at the very least the series, needed a huge shakeup to prevent from feeling samey and boring. And nothing of the sort happened. And the product we’re seeing is kind of samey and boring. The changes to the gameplay don’t cut it. They don’t really do much for a casual player like me, so it registers as superficial. If anything it kind of makes it worse because now I have to suck at the game if I want to see the super moves when I’m grinding away at arcade mode, because whether or not you have it is determined by your health, not your super meter. So I’m never gonna see these super hype moves when I’m playing arcade mode unless I do poorly. It feels wrong. Plus, the advantage it gives to the loosing player feels very… blue shell-ish. Sure, I can see how this will help get supers on screen at tournaments because now they don’t cost meter. But that really dosn’t affect me playing the game. Plus you know how I feel about customization. This entire Custom Variations thing is just a repeat of the Gear system and I HATED the gear system. Granted we’re getting back alt-costumes in this one but come on. Do people really like this crap enough that they’re keeping it around game after game! The pessimist in me sometimes wonders if this means that in the future fighting games won’t ship with any characters. And you’ll have to just make all of them yourself. And I don’t like that idea. I got into these games because of the characters and the story they go through. And they’re stripping it away for the sake of letting you “make your own Scorpion who plays how you want”. Well what I want is to play as Scorpion! And I want him to play like Scorpion! It’s just not needed and takes away from other aspects of the game.
I’m rambling at this point. But do you see why this game is generating anti-hype for me now?
Basically the PS2-era games in a nutshell, very little change between the 3 games (Deadly Alliance, Deception, Armageddon) and it did kill the series for a while. Only reason MK didn’t die with Midway was because WB saw potential in the franchise, but I can’t deny that ever since MKX or IJ2 that the new games have also become very samey. If anything this is just history repeating itself.
To be fair, most people get sick of the super move animations after the first dozen times they see it, so limiting it to be a rage art that only works once per match does keep it from being completely stale. Besides, most of the hype comes from flashy combos and close matches where one good hit changes the outcome of a match.
I can see this, comeback mechanics tend to be looked down on because they give a free damage bonus to the loser, but we’ve come a long way from SF4/MvC3 levels of comeback advantages. Hopefully it doesn’t straight up wreck the balance either way.
IJ2 had alt costumes as well, but they were split into pieces like KI’s costumes. Unlike KI though, the good costume pieces were hidden behind RNG garbage, but thankfully it’s gone now.
Fashion Souls is a big deal for some people, why do you think wrestling games and Soul Calibur still keep their customization systems? Because for some people it’s just fun to make their own characters, or make their own versions of Yoshi and Duke Nukem fight each other. I understand it’s not for everyone, but to act like no one likes to customize their fighters seems a little extreme.
Ultimately your statements feel like you may be approaching that point where games in general lose their hype, which is perfectly normal. Lord knows I reached that point ages ago, now only developers doing something ridiculous with their games gets me hype nowadays (which is the only reason I care for Namco’s fighters these days, their guest characters tend to reach the height of insanity at this point).
I suppose. I think you seem to have entirely too much of yourself wrapped into predicting what the devs will do though. Perhaps it’s because you yourself want to be a developer? Either way though it feels, at least to me, to be an unproductive way to tie yourself into a game or series. What you think a series “needs” is virtually always going to be different than what the developer thinks it needs or could use. And that’s not a reflection on you or your ideas, but moreso on the fact that it’s very difficult to predict what a team of 50 people 1,000 miles away are going to decide to do.
Getting excited about “being right” is generally a losing bet. Take things for what they are and enjoy things for what they are. And if something isn’t your cup of tea, then move on and find something else (or make something else) that is. There’s a certain equanimity in accepting things on their own terms and not wishing for them to change to comport to your expectations, and videogames in particular benefit from that mentality. The game is what the game is, and you either love it for that and look past its flaws or spend your time and energy elsewhere.
To be very clear, Deadly Alliance and Deception were commercial hits, selling 2 million units (3.5 million by 2011) and 2 million units respectively. Armageddon did worse and numbers seem harder to come by, but it sold at least a million units a year after release. The series was bought by WB because it was a bonified moneymaker, not because it had some ephemeral notion of “potential” behind it.
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I was referring to the gameplay itself technically, there were a lot of similarities between the 3 games. Also I said potential because after seeing how MKvDC turned out, it did feel like WB bought the IP out of good faith at the time; that is, they would turn MK into something people will truly like, instead of floundering like it did for so long.
I remember a lot of people bashing those 4 games for every reason imaginable, and most only remember them because it allowed other companies to realize fighters weren’t dead like they thought.
Apologies if this sounds like I’m lashing out. I personally enjoyed Deadly Alliance and Deception a good deal back in the day, but I have never heard people speak highly of them so my view on those games is horribly conflicted.
Mk vs DC also sold ~2 million units. That is the number that ultimately matters. All the word of mouth bashing of the games (most of which was post-hoc in my memory) is basically irrelevant. The numbers don’t lie - apparently people did like the direction of the series, enough to put down their hard-earned money in support of it.
The 3D MK’s aren’t particularly competitive, which is where most of that post-hoc criticism came from. But they were most assuredly popular, regardless of how tournament players or whoever else felt about them.
EDIT: my intent in these two responses isn’t to make anyone feel bad or prove anyone “wrong”. I just think it’s important to understand the metrics that are actually involved for the development team. Your sense that the 3D-era MK’s were unpopular is of a piece with Thought’s presumption that it’s “too soon” for another MK or that they “needed” a shakeup. The numbers that keep the lights on at NRS say that MK9 sold 3 million copies and MKX sold 5 million copies. They have no compelling monetary reason to break their established development cycle/rotation, and from the large shift in gameplay style they’ve showcased thus far I don’t think there’s any creative need to do so either. NRS is making the games they want to make, and the consumers are rewarding them for it.
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- It is also easy for me to understand that you are a person with no will. You just accept anything is considered socially right. I bet you wouldn’t question na zi’s if you lived in 1940 germany. I guess you never laugh. You talk about analysis like you expect someone to admire your finacial awareness, and you do that in an MK forum. Great.
- Now, we do not know if earth or the sun is the center of a system or if that system even exists. All the proposed systems have falses. The simplest one, in both heliocentric and geocentric, is that they do not produce a full moon visible from earth. And that is because two viewers cannot see the same thing the exact time. So when the sun sees allways a full moon as he lights it up, the earth could never see that. But in reality we see a full moon so the system must be different. And that is what i say, not a social idol.
- You say what i write is a self absorbed delusion. Anything in the world is a self absorbed delusion. Common sense does not exist. From colours, to sound and feelings. I guess you do not know these. You must search from an socially accepted prototype to copy them and make you feel strong over individuals.
- i guessed that if they doubled the company’s staff, now that it is on its prime, they would double the game and its size and the money. They would earn half of the time.
I do not have an analysis on that because simple things do not need an analysis and i do not want to do that or to search more on that. And of course that is my will and not the universal thruth you seek to follow as a good guy and true believer. - i say my will and maybe they will hear it. And i do not believe that NRS has a budget limitation, at least for doubling the game.
- ultimatelly, i do not like to talk about games as they are business. I do not care about business as you do. Maybe you are looking for a boss to cheer you up but i do not think this is the right place.
What does the geometrical take on the earth have to do with his argument? Just asking.
So how do you balance a character? Every one has about 10 moves and 1 behaviour(speed, size ect.). That means that in a roster of only 10 characters every move must be balance according to other 90 moves and 10 behaviours. I do not think it happens this way. I think they give every character solutions for any case( overhead, mid range, close, projectile,…), some bad ones and some good ones. Then if a character has 10 moves, in an 1 to 10 scale of greatness, every move takes a number. So balancing moves is more about between each characters own moves, rather than between every characters moves. Then balancing behaviours is between every character. That is why it is difficult to find different types in a 30 character roster. But i believe a roster of 60 is not impossible. The more realistic the characters the more unique they become. So i am waiting.
Thinking about it in the way you’ve described is perhaps the most inefficient way imaginable to approach balancing. Characters are generally based around archetypes of skills, and those cores are generally well developed in terms of strengths and weaknesses and how they interact with one another. Even a game with incredibly unique movesets and archetypes like KI still follows a lot of these ideas; it’s magic is often more in how it blends and plays with these foundations. Developing a well-balanced game isn’t about taking move X and putting it against 30 different permutations of move Y - it’s about ensuring that across the cast there is some form of valid counterplay to X. That can be associated with character size, movement options, a hard counter move of its own, or even with universal system mechanics. KI in particular covers a lot of pretty unfair stuff behind the ability to break combos and shadow counter, which are things that every member of the cast can do.
The point is that options must have valid counterplay, and that those counters cannot themselves be so strong that they totally invalidate the toolsets of other members of the roster. This balance is not something that requires summation notation to achieve, but neither can it be done without taking into account what tools you are giving other members of the cast.
Best of luck with that. 
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It’s not a geometrical take on the earth. It’s buying into a conspiracy delusion because it makes you feel special and important by “knowing” something other people don’t know.
Kind of like saying I’m a fascist drone because I think criticisms of NrS should be based on reality.
Admittedly it was a cheap shot. But his response is pretty good validation of my point.
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If that actually happens then I will literally have nothing to ever be happy or excited about and I’ll just be always miserable. So I hope it doesn’t.
That’s at a tournament though. What about when you’re just playing at home alone to let off steam and you just wanna feel like a god while beating up the computer? I can’t be the only person who gets that from these games. It feels like they made that decision ONLY thinking about tournament players and not the rest of the audience.
I just don’t get it. If I wanna see characters like that fight, and the ip owners haven’t graced us with an official crossover, I just use my imagination or draw it. The same is true if I want to make an OC. That’s just better to me. Customizable fighters always have limits no matter what. So between the two I’d choose the one with no limits where I can do whatever I want vs the limited one that lets me see it move around on a screen. I have the same problem with Minecraft.
That’s fair. And like I said, part of this was my fault. My assertion that they needed a shakeup was wrong, I guess. It just feels so… boring. Like they could do literally anything, they work for WB and have access to so many ips, and they’re just doing another MK. Does it feel like that way to any of you? I’m not against another Mortal Kombat, it just feels like now should have been the time to introduce something new and weird. But instead they’re just sticking to the NRS pattern. Come on! Be spontaneous! Take a risk! Flex your creative muscles! Don’t just give us the same two things over and over again. Eventually we get tired of chocolate and vanilla and want to try strawberry.
Gentle reminder to keep the conversation centered on MK and its development. That can take many forms, but I’ll likely mod replies that continue to veer off course.
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For myself, no. I’ve been looking forward to seeing what NRS would do with MK. Making some form of movie mash-up holds no interest to me, and would likely be a pain in the ■■■ for them to pull off in terms of rights and royalties and whatnot.
Dunno how others feel, but that’s where I stand on it