What does MKX needs to be a successful game?

I was thinking how come some games attract an insane amount of new players while still having a lot of depth to it.
any competitive game needs to be accessible to beginners.
It must offer the resources for people to learn the mechanics of the game if they chose to learn the game at a deeper level.
I good net code and a well structured ranking system is a necessity if you ask me.
think of MOBA's,card games and any other popular E-sports.
They have good net code, and a great online ranking system.
I would like MKX do have a similar ranking system to Hearthstone.
Hearthstone has has 25 ranks and a legend rank.
you go down the ladder from 25.
to move on your need several consecutive wins, streaks give you additional wins.
when you hit legend(rank 0) you cannot be demoted to earlier ranks.
Legend has its own set of ranks.
the top 200 legend players are usually tournament players and people they train with.

The ranking structure is so good that a lot of tournament organizers invite players to their tournament based on their rank in previous seasons.
Ranks reset every month.

Do you guys think that MKX will implement anything close to this?
what kind of ranking would you like to see?

What would you class as successful?

It's going to sell a shit ton of copies because it's a Mortal Kombat game that looks beautiful.

That in itself will make it "successful".

It needs the name Mortal Kombat attached to it, luckily it already has that so it is pretty much good to go.

SneakyTortoise said:

What would you class as successful?

It's going to sell a shit ton of copies because it's a Mortal Kombat game that looks beautiful.

That in itself will make it "successful".

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I think maybe he means successful in the long term.

For a game to be GREAT it needs tons of things from proper mechanics and depth.

For a game to be SUCCESSFUL though, it literally just takes people to buy it, play it online, and join tournaments for it.

A game could be terrible but be widely successful. It's mostly about the game making people want to keep playing it for other reason or another.

I honestly think MkX will be great and successful.

SneakyTortoise said:

What would you class as successful?

It's going to sell a shit ton of copies because it's a Mortal Kombat game that looks beautiful.

That in itself will make it "successful".

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well I meant more in terms of will people stick to it.
NRS actually do something to make people play it for a lot longer.
will people want to play it long after it's release?
Fighting games are so fucking fun, but most people never experience it because the entry level is so difficult.

Online rankings don't really interest me and I just don't see how they would draw new players in. If mkx does it hearthstone style, I probably wouldn't have a problem with it, but I don't think I would be in love with it either.

NoobHunter420 said:

well I meant more in terms of will people stick to it.
NRS actually do something to make people play it for a lot longer.
will people want to play it long after it's release?
Fighting games are so fucking fun, but most people never experience it because the entry level is so difficult.

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I have this same problem with a lot of my friends. They always tell me they don't understand fighting games and they kind of just mash buttons, but I try to tell them when you actually learn what the hell is going on, the game becomes so much fun. They always tell me that they don't like fighting games because they suck at them. I really think they haven't put in the effort to get better.

I think good netcode is important. Something MK9 and injustice did not have.

Also no machine gun patching until one final patch 6 months into the games life when it's barely explored. Better post launch support would be nice.

Seems like another thread I answered this in.

Pretty easy to have a decent net code in a turn based card game. MOBA's aren't sticklers for extremely good connections either although they help, it doesn't drastically change the game when you have some lag. When you get to games where every frame matters then yes it's difficult but doable, but my point is don't give too much credit to those games netcodes, you won't feel it as much as a fighting game when you're trying to punish something. I also don't see what is spectacular about hearthstones ranking system, it's essentially winrate. Not that there is much of a difference in skill gap in that game between someone who's legend or simply rank 1 so I don't see a good transition of that ranking system.

If MKX is going to be played down the rode, then the same thing needs to happen for every game.

A)Competitive players want to play it because it's a good game. By good here I mean it's a pretty deep game and the better player wins the overwhelming majority of the time. This is pretty much NRS's number one hurdle to get more people into the game. I mean you can make the game accessible to casuals but it's line that you have to be careful with because dumbing down the game for casuals doesn't add any hidden depth.

B)It's enjoyable to spectate. These are things like aesthetics and animations, as well as having a meta that doesn't become stale or repetitive that keeps people wanting to watch for more than a month until the new game hype wears down.

Without these two things online will count for shit, but if they are, then yeah stable netcode will help the game keep it's casual or mid-level fanbase which will continue to supply B) that supplies A).

it already has a big name, good presentation and a lot of ideas. now it needs 2 more things:

1. balance, if necessary achieved by long-term support
2. a good netcode

thats it.

Punchwalk

In rough order of ease to accomplish/likelyhood(assuming you're talking about a thriving or growing community, as putting the MK label on a jar of Boon's urine would probably ship enough copies to make a profit)-

1. Good netcode. In this era especially it'd be a travesty for it to be as bad as it was last time. Shit netcode will kill large portions of the playerbase, both casuals and competitive, and would be something you'd expect to see hurt their review scores.

2. Ranking/feedback. It helps to know when you're actually making progress. Technically easy, but it means nothing if you don't have #1.

3. Online tournament system. I'm still waiting for a fighter, or hell any game at all, to really take advantage of this. No it won't be as legit as winning a local but we've got the netcode now, and being able to set this sort of thing up online(where it could actually handle the bookkeeping for you and auto handle who needs to play who) would be HUGE for the competitive community. Players could really get more solid feedback, find out about and play against pro's from other areas, and the amount of salt generated between online warriors and local players would be amusing as hell.

4. A GOOD tutorial system. I've yet to see a single fighter ever that has an even remotely decent tutorial. There's some that are "deep" like VF's, but don't actually handle the information in a way that's easy to understand for a brand new player, but there's nothing that actually does a good job of both explaining and conveying to the average casual that there's more to these fucking games than smashing buttons and special moves. I know how fighting games work, and it's still pulling teeth just to get my friends to fucking block. The first fighter that actually does this could see major growth and retention in the community, and I suspect that part of smashes initial success, besides obvious "OH LOOK IT'S X CHARACTER", was that it was somewhat easy to learn the basics(even scrubs roll/shield).

Realistically, we'll be lucky if we just get the first one, and I'd only put money on the 2nd actually happening. At the end of the day communities do help them sell more units in the future, but no one is going to spend the time or money to gamble on something like 3/4 working/increasing sales. Especially when they've got a brand that can sell on name alone and DLC easily moves more units/brings people back all on its own, so there's no point attempting to retain them when you can just drop the Justin Beiber DLC and make another $50000 or whatever.

Wemfs said:

I have this same problem with a lot of my friends. They always tell me they don't understand fighting games and they kind of just mash buttons, but I try to tell them when you actually learn what the hell is going on, the game becomes so much fun. They always tell me that they don't like fighting games because they suck at them. I really think they haven't put in the effort to get better.

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Get them to play when a game is fairly new. I love fighting games but I'm usually really bad too. Trying to play umvc3 like 2 years late, I didnt bother.i played vs the Ai and that was it. When injustice came around I was like yeah! And got better with time, but I also had the same chance with everyone else to get better.even though injustice isn't the best fighting to start my career at, I got the grasp of what fighting games are about.

i've been saying this for it feels like forever, let me break it down. Dev Support is the number one thing that can make it successful. unfortunately with past iterations we have gotten at most 6 months support plus hotfixes. for both INJ and MKX we got 4 DLC characters.

Now lets look at successful games that are more than 3 years old that have the highest amount of players and Competitive scenes.

Dota 2 beta start around 2011, they JUST released another new character two weeks ago, and keep making updates, and just last week where the Asian Championships with a prize pool of $3.1 Million.

League of Legends, it has over 67 millions unique players per month......can we just take a step back real quick and think about that for a second here people. 67......Million..........thats more people that the state of California, thats more people than owners of all next gen consoles combined in the world......thats probably more than the population of earth in the 1500's or something crazy like that, and you wanna know why? LoL started back in 2009 people, SF4 came out in 2008, and it wasn't because LoL was free, or that it was a moba, it was because the Devs SUPPORTED THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE GAME!!!! it doesn't not take a rocket scientist NRS. i know WB has you on a leash, you have to release a new game every two years to maximize profits even though in terms of fighters you are the number 1 selling brand, i understand. and how do you grow your market without over staying your welcome? release MKX.....don't patch every two weeks, give it time to marinate unless its super broken......don't release INJ 2 or whatever until 2019-2020 MKX has the potential to last 4-5 years, its MK for christ sake. eSports focus, and a platform for content creators to grow. undoubtedly one of the main reasons LoL grew so much was its international appeal and Youtube/twitch. i mea besides Max there isn't another big FGC content creator and i mean big as in BIG. ART is getting there but we need a nadeshot for the FGC and we don't have that.

I think these are needed:
- Not complicate commands. Like the 720 in other fighters (I even saw a 1080 in AH3 )
- A good tutorial. Skullgirls almost has it.
- A good practice mode. New fighters are doing well in this regard.
- Good netcode. Think of SCV or TTT2 or GGPO.
- Good balance at casual and pro level. The first months of IGAU were a bad example.

@Eji1700 Honestly I thought KI's tutorial was great but maybe it was just me.

Street Fighter 4/Marvel VS. Capcom 3 players.

Netcode, netcode, netcode...We basically know how the game will play from experience with mk9 and injustice. We understand it won't be perfect and that it can't be 100% balanced, all that stuff we can deal with in our own ways. But a shit netcode? Nothing we can do about it.

Using a 2d hitbox for a 2d fighting game

A proper training mode would be a good start.
A netcode upgrade. If theyre going all out with this online clan thing, we cant be playing in quick sand.
More than a few months worth of support from the devs. Theres going to be bugs, theres going to be glitches, and theres going to be character abilities that will need attention. Not all of it will be found out in such a short period of time.

A strong supportive hungry community

Mortal Kombat X will likely see both critical and commercial success. But, its longevity largely depends on NRS' involvement.

Cassie Cage with lots of cool alt skins.