TL/DR: What would you like to see in the next MK? What would you like for them to change from MKX for the next one? I know it’s early, but I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts.
I’m curious where people want to see this series go. What can Netherealm learn from or change from MKX and what would you like to see in the next game?
For me:
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X-Rays: Scrap them. Two games in, they weren’t nearly as novel as they were the first time around. Also, don’t replace them with a new hook like free fall kombat or button tapping mini-games or whatever. Keep special enhancements and maybe have as upper move of some sort for each character, but make it quick so it doesn’t interrupt the action as much as X-Rays did. I’d also reduce the power on a move like that as well.
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Story Mode: Restructure it. Remove the chapters, and get everyone’s perspective, even if only for a match or two. Every character should have a good level of involvement in the plot. Also, don’t be afraid to end matches prematurely, have scenes mid-match or lengthen the number of matches between story moments. The battles serve the story in this mode. Fold them around what you want to tell.
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Storytelling: PLEASE take the material more seriously. We grew up on these characters and the mysterious life or death tournament that they fought in. Give the characters a more human range of emotions and make them smarter in the decisions they make and what motivates them. Use more complex themes to tell a more intricate and nuanced story. MKX headed in this direction, but it needs to go further and cut out a lot of the campiness.
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Arcade Endings: Make them canon. Stop with the “Sub Zero riding ice dragons because who cares, this doesn’t happen anyways” crap. Use arcade endings to augment story mode. Maybe give us one canon ending that supplements what the character did during the story that we don’t see in story mode and then another that gets unlocked once we’ve beaten story mode and then arcade mode again to give us some info on what’s happening with that character after story mode leaves off. Again, canon.
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The roster: Really, it’s time to take some risks. I’m not saying Netherealm has to go full on Street Fighter 3, but so many fans wanted 3D era characters to get a real second chance in this game after the MK9 reboot of the series. Instead, we got a bunch of extraneous trilogy era characters, many of whom fans were actually saddened to see upon their reveal. The new MKX characters were fantastic, so more new characters would be nice, but lower the number of trilogy characters and be a bit more bold in who makes it and who’s either DLC or simply doesn’t make it at all.
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Animations / Combo System: Increase fluidity all around. Combos need to feel more natural and even player improvised. Less 50/50’s. More fluid startup animations and jumping that doesn’t seem to have such a tight input window for attacking. In fact, loosen input windows all around. MK’s come a long way in these areas, but it still needs to do away with the choppy, stiff character movements, animations, timing windows, etc.
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Netcode: Improve this a thousand times. KI’s netcode is vastly superior and it came out about a year and a half earlier.
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Premium Pricing: Please… Enough with the super expensive DLC, the ridiculously expensive Kollectors Editions or Premium Editions or whatever. I get that this game costs money, but four characters and a few skins for half the price of the whole game? Or spending $150 or more on a collector’s edition, just to have some piece of plastic or whatever thrown in? I feel like some of this stuff capitalizes on fans love of the series by gouging them in to spending too much and while people certainly don’t 'have" to buy it, it still feels oily.
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Paytalities: Scrap the red tokens. Buying the ability to do one button fatalities? How about allowing people that don’t want to perform forward down forward 1 the ability to simply toggle on one button fatalities without having to pay real cash to perform a couple of fatalities?
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Faction Wars: Get a new hook or improve this dramatically. It’s a good idea in theory, but there didn’t seem to be any worthwhile reasons to play this beyond some gold rewards. Give people real incentive to play (ie character outfits, canon story supplements, bonus character bios, maybe even bonus characters and backgrounds). I know, all of that costs money and time to make, but I felt no camaraderie with my faction, leveling up felt largely useless, rewards seemed minimal (profile icons? meh…). If this is going to be a thing, and I think it can, then it has to have a good stream of weekly content beyond an impossible boss battle and yet another tower with characters I already have.
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Variations: Cool idea, but much like stances in MK:DA and MK:D, we really don’t need three per character. Also, there was a lot of inconsistency in how different characters actually were from one variation to another. Some had mere gimmick changes like Reptile with a poison cloud. Reduce the variations to two, but give each character completely different looks and special moves. Otherwise it just feels like a gimmick and, in general, MK really needs to get away from gimmicks.
Here’s (most of) my list, what’s yours?